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He could hear it long before he could see it. The repetitive bursts of air and the sound of tennis balls cutting through the small space of the lab—it could only mean one thing, and Chase knew it was up to him to put an end to it.
The automatic doors at the end of one of the long corridors leading to Kendall’s secret lab opened as he approached it. He took survey of the room.
As was to be expected from that symphony of sounds that Chase hated so dearly, Riley was there, sword in hand and working up a sweat to the pace of the tennis ball launcher. Riley seemed to be working on his backhanded deflection—Typical, Chase thought—and the launcher was putting the targets right where he would hit them.
Just behind Riley’s little set up, Shelby was sitting at one of the lab tables. She had an array of (probably boring) paleontology periodicals spread out over the top of one table and a series of multicolored highlighters.
Chase sighed. Where was the fun? The excitement? At the very least, where were Tyler and Koda? Like Kendall, they were probably working. How on earth he had ended up with the world’s largest collection of workaholics as teammates, Chase would never know.
And after that one day of extreme fun they’d had not so long ago, Chase had hoped there might be a spark of change of sorts in store for his team. Something along the lines of less order, maybe. In retrospect, he knew it was too much to ask. A few more fun training moves that didn’t stick was about all he could expect.
Even so, he knew that all this routine—as tightly to it as everyone seemed to cling to it—was bound to get stale. Everyone else would realize this soon enough. It was just his job to point it out to them before it actually did. At least, that’s how Chase was going to think of it, and he knew right where to start: with the routine king himself.
“Okay, Ri,” Chase announced, in the tone of an ultimatum. “Enough is enough.”
He groped at the side of the tennis ball launcher until he found the power switch. Upon finding it, he turned it off triumphantly. Riley looked to him in confusion, completely ignoring the final tennis ball until it was too late. The ball impacted squarely against his chest with a force that he should have expected but didn’t. He recoiled both in pain and annoyance.
(Chase could admit to finding some sick pleasure in watching these emotions flash across Riley’s face. Were he a fraction less adorable, it wouldn’t be such a distraction.)
“Hey! Riley objected, rubbing at his soon-to-be bruise. He, sword still in hand, marched over to where Chase guarded the power switch. “I was training!”
“I know, mate,” He smirked, folding his arms. “It’s called rescuing you.”
“I don’t need rescued! I was in the zone.”
“So get out of the zone! The real world is out here and you might just like it if you try it.”
“Here we go again,” Shelby smiled to herself. She capped the yellow highlighter in her hand and reached under a pile of magazines to find her spiral notebook and flipped to a fresh page. Both Chase and Riley shot her a look of annoyance, but she ignored both.
“Come on, Chase,” Riley whined, deciding to ignore Shelby as completely as he could. He reached for the launcher, but Chase guarded it with his feet firmly planted and his arms crossed. “I thought we agreed to disagree. As in you train—or don’t train—in your way, and I’ll train in mine?”
Shelby put a tally mark on the left of her notebook. “Point Riley.”
“We did,” Chase ceded, “But—”
“No ‘buts.’” Riley insisted, trying to reach around, but to no avail.
“One ‘but,’” He corrected, not willing to play on Riley’s terms. “I’m not saying you should stop training—which by the way is not what I do, but anyway—I’m just offering an alternative regimen. You like regimens. And I like alternatives to whatever it is you’re doing. This is what we, in the real world, call a win-win.”
“One-half point Chase.”
“We’re not keeping score, Shelbs,” Chase rolled his eyes.
“Speak for yourself. I’m up half a point.” Riley smiled for the first time since his work out had been interrupted, but seemed to catch himself and put it away for later.
“Please?” Chase pushed every ounce of sincerity into that one little word he could. Riley sighed heavily, only prompting him to lay it on thicker. “This is concern, mate. This is what concern looks like, okay?” He gestured to his face. “You’re going to drive yourself mad and I won’t stand for it.”
Riley seemed to ponder this. He looked over his shoulder to Shelby who shrugged with a raise of her eyebrows. “Fine.”
“Fine meaning you’ll do it?”
“Fine meaning… Walk me through this so-called regimen and we’ll see.”
“And in a surprising turn of events,” Shelby announced, knowingly. “Game point goes to Randall and the farm boy goes home empty handed.”
“Somehow, I should have seen this coming,” Riley gulped, the tip of Chase’s spare board teetering over the edge of the beginners ramp under his feet. “I’m so not ready for this.”
Chase looked up, smiling to himself at the sight of Riley. At his own insistence, Riley had gone through the tub of safety equipment the skate park rented out, looking for the most heavily padded knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards and a helmet that he inspected thoroughly for lice. Chase thought that he kind of looked like a green and khaki version of the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.
“You’ll be fine,” He called up as Riley leaned forward just short of enough to actually start going down. “Don’t think of it as boarding, okay? Think of it as physics. You like physics.”
“Would you stop telling me what I like?”
“Would you just go, mate?”
Riley huffed and stepped off the board, readjusting it with his hands. He aligned himself to the center of both the ramp and the board, timidly stepping back onto the board, and despite his earlier quip, Chase could swear he saw the numbers and equations of a physics problem flashing before Riley’s eyes just before he finally pushed off.
He wiped out.
Chase couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” Riley collected himself and sat in the middle of the ramp, rubbing at his wrist. “I’d like the record to show that this was my very first ever attempt and I’m sure you weren’t born boarding, either.”
“Fair enough,” Chase smiled, sitting beside him. The park was nearly empty. Most of the people who were there were regulars that Chase recognized, all too good for the beginner’s ramp. Mostly this ramp was used by children learning or taking lessons after school, but he decided that Riley didn’t need to know that part. The fall had done enough for his pride. “Let me ask you something, Ri.”
“Hm?”
“Is there anything you do… just for the fun of it?”
“Not physics, I’ll tell you that.” He laughed, pulling the board he’d wiped out on onto his lap, and turned it upside down to play with the wheels.
“You know what I mean.”
“Fencing,” Riley answered. “Fencing is what I do for fun.”
“Other than that?”
Riley got quiet. Chase looked at him, patiently.
There had to be something, some way that he could break through the routine and the training and the rough edges to get to the real Riley—the happy Riley. He’d seen that Riley for an afternoon at the stadium, carefree and fun, and since then Chase had been willing to do whatever it took to see him like that again.
“I play with my dog,” Riley finally said. “His name is Rubik.”
“A dog person, eh,” Chase smiled. Riley cracked one himself. “I kinda pegged you for a cat person, honestly. This is good. Keep going. What else?”
“Reading?” It sounded like a guess. Chase nodded appreciatively anyway. “And puzzles. I’m really good a puzzles.”
“But do you like them? There’s a difference between being good at something and liking it.”
“I like puzzles enough,” Riley focused back on spinning the wheels on the board. “I’m not crazy for puzzles or anything. It’s just… You’re going to think this is dumb.”
“I promise I won’t.”
“It sometimes feels like I don’t deserve to have fun.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Well, it’s how I feel.”
Riley, of all the people on the team, deserved to have the most fun. He and Kendall combined had enough fun days saved up to take the rest of their lives off on vacation. Although, Riley’s seriousness seemed unwarranted in a way that Kendall’s didn’t. What could he be so high strung about all the time?
“I don’t always feel like I deserve to be on the team at all.” Chase admitted.
“What do you mean?” Riley’s eyebrows came together in that way that made Chase want to smooth them out with his thumbs. He didn’t seem to understand. Chase should have seen that coming. How could he understand? Of course Riley never felt like a burden to the team. Riley was strong. He was so dedicated to everything he did that he couldn’t possibly understand what it was that Chase was feeling. Riley wouldn’t know what it was like to feel he wasn’t carrying his weight, because the fact was that he did carry his weight, and Chase’s on occasion.
“I mean, all things considered, I’m the damsel here, aren’t I?”
“The damsel?” He laughed, shaking his head. “You’re no damsel, Chase.”
“Yes, I am,” Chase sighed. “I’m the damsel in distress. Let’s see if I can refresh that memory of yours, huh? I tried to save Koda from that cage freak, and got trapped in a cave where Tricera had to come free me. I tried to help Moana. I ended up under a spell and you guys had to figure out how to get me back to normal. And worst of all, I tried to take on that walking toothache to prove myself, and you had come to save my butt again.”
“Wait, hold on. That stunt with Cavity… You were trying to prove yourself? I thought you were trying to level up your showoff score.” Riley seemed to be finding the whole conversation suddenly rather amusing and Chase didn’t know whether to be flattered that Riley couldn’t picture him as the damsel he knew himself to be, or hurt that the one person he wanted reassuring him didn’t understand why he needed reassured.
“Of course I was trying to prove myself. I had to after everything I’ve been doing wrong lately, didn’t I?”
“You don’t have to prove yourself to me, hotshot,” He smiled. Chase melted a little at the sight of that, and smiled back. Riley blushed and cleared his throat in response. “I mean, you don’t have to prove yourself to any of us. We’re a team, right? We’re always going to have your back and save your butt. You know, in the off-chance your butt ever needs saving.”
“Thanks, mate,” He said, pulling the board off Riley’s lap and standing up. “And you deserve to have fun, like, all the time.”
“Having fun all the time defeats the purpose,” Riley said, standing up, too. “I mean how are you supposed to know you’re having fun if you don’t have something boring to compare it to?”
“Fun—like boarding,” Chase said with an air of authority, “Is all about balance.”
They climbed to the top of the ramp and Chase put the board on the edge. Riley looked at it skeptically.
“Go for it,” Chase said, patting Riley’s shoulder. “Have some fun.”
“Next time, we’re doing a puzzle.”
“Deal.”