Chapter Text
Jess closes her eyes against the scorching heat and focuses on leaning when Lupe leans, sinking into the electric contact of her hand on Lupe’s smooth, bare side below the cutoff tee. Leaning toward that asphalt blur to maintain balance feels utterly counterintuitive and is the hardest part of learning to ride together.
“Relax,” Lupe murmurs, her own posture fluid against Jess’s rigid sturdiness. They’re not up to full speed yet; the bike coasts slowly over the hilly bumps past the lone service station of the South Dakota town.
They’ve come out to lead a summer baseball camp with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and she loves the easy generosity and intense resilience of the children, and, on their off days, getting to know a different kind of prairie, one where red rock layers replace tall wheat. None of the League’s usual hawk eyes apply here, and it’s so good to be in a place that takes them as they come. The only thing that’s brought back a thread of unease has been her hermano’s acquiring of this secondhand bike. Because as much as she loves adventure, she likes Lupe in one piece.
She’s trying, today, to relax, to yield a little control, because Lupe came back from her first solo Badlands run with shining eyes and determination for Jess not to miss seeing the land this way. But whenever Lupe leans at an angle to follow the curving road, her own body fights to straighten them. It’s her innate protectiveness or self-preservation, the impulse to keep them both safe even though her resistance is really making their balance more precarious. She feels a little lightheaded, squeezing her arms tighter around Lupe’s waist, nearly ready to ask her to pull over.
“Look up, Jess,” coaxes Lu’s voice, rich and resonant, and the blinding sunlight sears her vision until the scene clears before them. The road is fully open now on both sides, surrounded by ridged plateaus flooded the color of sunrise. Some peaks brilliant where they catch the sun and some muted in shadow, the layers of orange, pink and red chart the passage of time for what was once a boundless sea. The air, cooled by speed, caresses their bodies as they soar.
For a moment she loses herself joyously in the vastness, before slowly sinking back into awareness of her own singing nerves and the rumbling leather seat.
It feels different, now. Distracted by the vast scenery, she’s finally slipped into the rhythm of the bike, of the road, of Lupe. Her body has given up its guardedness, melding easily against Lupe’s strong back, trusting her to keep them safe as they fly.