[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Over the Barrel

Series: Flying Red Barrel

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 1696 words

B/D: I wanted to write more Flying Red Barrel stuff in the new year, so here's a Flying Red Barrel story! I'm still getting to know the characters and the setting, and experiment with the dynamics, so be a little patient with me.

The problem with living in the country is that the country very often wants to come home with you, usually in the guise of a thick coating of mud on your shoes. It’s maddening for him. He cleans and shines his boots every morning, but if he puts one foot outside the Blue Crow he looks like he’s been mucking out a dairy farm from the ankle down. Appearance, he believes, is important. The little girls and boys of the town always tell stories about the pilots, and he’d much rather appear in them as a sharply-dressed skyfarer than your run-of-the-mill dishevelled airman.

(Actually, when the children of the town talk about him, they talk less about his dress sense and more about his preternatural talent for bailing out of a burning aircraft without loss of life or limb. He’s one of the few ex-Guild pilots to have attracted a sobriquet amongst them – the “Tenacious Blue Crow.”)

He sometimes thinks how convenient it would be to be able to fly without an aeroplane – not high, or fast, but to just hover a foot or so above the ground when the mood took him. It would be instrumental in making him hate cows less. Cows, quite apart from weighing half a tonne each and knowing how to use it when a pilot crash-lands in their pasture, produce cow pats, and cow pats produce hours of oiling, washing, and chiselling the muck from your favourite footwear. But such convenience would dilute the majesty of the flight, the excitement. There would never be anything quite as thrilling as taking to the skies and hearing the Blue Crow’s engine right next to him. Quite possibly nothing as loud, either.

He folds his arms, leans against a water butt by the barn and sighs heavily. It’s a perfectly cloudless summer day – the best of the best, as far as flying goes. Yet, here he is, waiting for his passenger to actually turn up. Speaking of the majesty of flight, it would probably be a lot more majestic if people would stop using him as a taxi. Bereft of anything else to occupy his time, he takes off his scarf – not before checking that nobody can see him, of course, since the scarf is really what ties together his whole ensemble – and uses it to polish his goggles.

After another fifteen minutes of fruitless sweating in the afternoon sun, the barn doors finally open and Marc stumbles out of them, yawning as she does. She has dry hay stuck in her strawberry blond hair, and one of her pigtails is trying very hard to escape its tie. She tries to fuss with it one-handed while her helmet dangles from the other.

“About time, Red Barrel!” he barks, marching up to her. “We’re going to be late for afternoon practice!”

“Huh? Aw, it’s just you, Peat.” She yawns again, and looks every inch a maiden who has just been roused from a happy nap. “Don’t get your breaches in a bunch. Sherry won’t mind.”

“That’s fine for you. I’ve got to deal with Islay! What were you doing all morning, anyway? They told me you only had one job set up.”

“I did. Old man Whiskey wanted me to take a look at his hay baler. We both figured that if I could get a plane working, a hay baler shouldn’t be any big deal. I managed to get her ticking again well ahead of time, so I caught a nap in the hay loft. Not like I could do much else with Islay checking out my plane all morning.”

She takes a huge stretch, narrowly missing his nose with her helmet, and starts to pick the straw out of her hair. She’s wearing her green flight suit, which he hates. It always makes her look so thin, and delicate, and boyish, and yet somehow it never fails to make him nervous. It’s too form-fitting, is what it is. A real pilot should wear puffy trousers, so you couldn’t possibly imagine what their legs might look like underneath. And a nice, padded jacket, so you couldn’t tell how large their chest might or might not be. And a scarf, so you couldn’t see the nape of their neck when you’re stood behind them. Why did she insist on twin pigtails, anyway? Hair like that was just asking to be played with. As a man of discipline and honour, he had never quite succumbed to the temptation yet, but he was absolutely being tempted. It was intolerable.

“Tch. Sleeping in haylofts and keeping your fellow pilots waiting? What a fine example you set, Red Barrel. It’s a good thing there’s no Guild anymore, or they’d probably be looking to kick you out of it,” he seethes. He’s angry, for reasons he doesn’t want to examine too closely for fear of what he might find.

“What, you’ve never taken a nap in a hay loft? You ought to try it some time. It’s really relaxing – might help your attitude,” she says, although as she wakes up her tone is starting to get more fiery. “Why’d they send you to pick me up, anyway?”

“Because Islay doesn’t like me,” he grumbles, although that’s not true. He doesn’t know if Islay is capable of liking or disliking anything. She’s so cool and reserved. So technical. He doesn’t know if her plane is the machine or she is. He prefers to fly with more passion, which Islay says is all well and good, but she’d really rather he learn the textbook manoeuvres so he gets shot down less often doing it.

She shakes her head, although a wry smile has crept onto her face. “No, I meant: Why’d they send a guy with a single seater plane to carry two people? It’s gonna be a real tight fit.”

“We’ll just have to manage it,” he says brusquely, putting on his goggles.

“Suuuuure. So, are you sitting in my lap or am I sitting in yours?”

He chokes. “That’s inappropriate!”

“Inappropriate? One of us has got to be practical, and from the amount of time you spend polishing those boot buckles of yours, I’m guessing it isn’t going to be you,” she says, walking to the plane. “Here. There’s a little gap behind the pilot’s seat. I think I can just about squeeze my way in there.”

He sighs. “I guess we’re lucky that you’re so small where it counts, then.”

“Now who’s inappropriate?!” she replies hotly, and claps him on the side of the head with her helmet. “Quit your squawking, Blue Crow, or I’ll clip your wings in practice later!”

There’s a strange mix of emotions as he takes his place in the pilot seat. On one hand, she did just hit him, and pretty hard at that. On the other hand, he really prefers it when she argues with him. Sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she sees him and just smiles, as if he’s made her day better by walking into it. Sometimes he remembers that she’s a girl his age who shares his interests, fears nothing and can still look beautiful with her hair full of straw. He doesn’t quite know how to deal with all that. Being rivals is simpler. Shoot or get shot – everything else is beside the point.

“To be fair, that clunky plane of yours doesn’t need any extra weight, so that makes your figure pretty much perfect,” he says as he starts the ignition. The engine growls pleasantly.

“You think you can bad-mouth the Red Barrel and smooth-talk me in the same sentence, huh? Why’s my figure any of your business, anyway? And why is the engine so loud? Do you never tune it or something?” she shouts.

“It’s not loud, it’s passionate!” he yells back. Okay, so it is a little loud, but that’s its charm point. The Blue Crow wouldn’t be the same without its roaring engine, just like the Red Barrel wouldn’t be the same without enough rockets to decimate a small country. It’s also a great excuse to ignore the parts of her question that he doesn’t want to answer. “Preparing for takeoff!”

The plane trundles across the field, gathering speed. Normally he’d want a bigger run-up than this one, but practising with Islay is doing him at least some good, and he manages to get airborne well in time. It isn’t long before the countryside beneath them is a patchwork quilt of fields, and they’re well on their way to the rendezvous spot.

“Hey, Blue Crow! If you think I’m so skinny, why don’t you take me out to lunch?” she yells into his ear.

“Are you kidding?”

He can, over the roar of the engine and the whistle of the wind, almost hear her giggling. “Oh, I get it! Big mouth, small pocketbook. If you’re that hard up, I’ll pay for both of us!”

“What?! I can pay for my own meal!” he shouts. “Why are you so steamed about this whole thing? I already told you, I think you look perf-”

He realises what he’s about to say and bites his tongue – probably not fast enough.

“Who says I’m mad? Maybe I just really want to go out for lunch!” she says, probably not aware that a not-mad Marc who just wants to eat lunch with him is more terrifying on a social level than the firebrand who keeps hitting him with missiles. “Hey, we’re almost there! I’m surprised this thing can go this fast.”

“I’ll show you how fast it can go after training, Red Barrel! I haven’t forgotten the last time you shot me down!”

“We’ll see about that! Winner picks where we eat tomorrow, and the loser pays. I hope you brought your wallet!”

“You’re on!”

He begins the descent to where Sherry and Islay are waiting in their aircraft, with the Red Barrel settled a short way away. In the next few days, he will learn two very important things.

The first is that however much he’s learning with Islay, Marc has been learning even more under Sherry.

The second is how quickly Marc can pack away a sirloin steak.

A/N: To be absolutely honest, I was mostly just goofing off and having fun, but I think it turned out okay, and I'd like to have more fun than I've been having pushing against writer's block recently. Peat is the most tsun.