albinomilksnake

"Tch. Think you know the answer to that already."

Joel scoots back sideways to straddle the bench, arms slack at the elbows to follow the steady rock of the boat without jerking the line, eyes still fixed on the bobber floating off in the distance. Hers keeps inching closer; she's getting the hang of it exactly like he figured she would.

"Y'know normally we'd be using bait," He'd managed the lines before he woke her, tying the bobbers, the sinkers, the hooks. Unearthed dust and grit left behind in the tackle box from 20 years of decay, where roe and worms unsurprisingly don't keep. "I reckon we'll do just fine without, but the next time we go at this I'll see if I can't dig something up before we jump in."

Her gaze is locked out toward the bobbers on the end of their lines, predatory like a hawk waiting for some sign of a mouse - as if she could somehow will a fish to find its way to her hook. She does however tip her head slightly in Joel's direction, mouth going all lopsided as she frowns.

"If there's no bait, why bother? Do they just hook themselves for fun?" She tugs faintly at her line. You're supposed to do that, right? Just mess around with it until something comes along and gets curious?

"Well it ain't nothin on the end, there- that hook of yours still looks like dinner to them." He stiffens up slightly, momentarily consider reeling back in to point out the plastic he'd lashed onto the line-- but it was a good cast. He'd rather not waste it.

"Easy, Ellie, easy. Movement's fine, but no fish alive is gonna jump around the way you're tugging on that line right now."

Counting out the rise and fall of the boat in the water, Joel jerks his wrist up at the highest point before going all loose as they settle back down.

"Huh." She slows the tug back of the line, gazing out across the water. "Shit, fish are dumb."

For a moment or two she settles, quiet as the boat sways gently in the water. Her technique is clumsy, but she's got a sharp eye; copying the gentle way Joel twitches his own fishin rod back isn't really rocket science anyway.

Then: "So how long does this usually take?"

"Not anywhere near what it takes to track a deer." He snorts, flicking the tail end of his pole again, synthetic twine sinking down to lay on the surface tension of the water. "Couple of hours if we do well. Hell, back in the day we'd spend all morning like this."

Sarah didn't sit still for it, either.

"--Trust me, the wait's worth it."

Yeah, but tracking a deer involves walking and stuff. This is sitting in a boat in open water, simultaneously doing nothing at all while trying to keep away from the sides of the boat, trying not to think about how much water is or isn't under them and what kind of freak accident of nature might possibly cause her to go over the side.

Ellie tugs her line absently, quiet. She hugs the bench with her knees. "If you say so."

"I paddled you around on a board and you're scared of this?"

Teasing her is all part of the fun. He doesn't expect her to shake her fear in the first hour of rowing out across a lake, but he doesn't have to keep his mouth shut in the middle of it either. Besides, after shaking off the aftermath of the university, the way he sees it neither of them really need that much quiet.

He catches sight of a few ripples not too far away from their bobbers.

"Gettin' close. Keep it up."

"Hey, that shit's scary too," she snaps back at him, nose wrinkling as she gently tugs her line in time with the lap of the water. "This is just weird 'cause we're so...far from the edge." And they are: drifting along out into the middle of the lake, far from anything like shallows or shore or anything whatsoever to scrabble at for a handhold. There's no walls or edges or anything to grab for should something go wrong.

So yeah. Little spooky.

She doesn't notice the ripples - for all her hyper focus on the water, the minute change in the surface doesn't register - but she does notice the sudden dip of one of the bobbers followed by a distinct tug at her line.

"Whoa! Whoa! What now? What do I do? Joel!"

"Alright, alright don't go all stiff--" He goes upright, dropping his pole till it hits the side of the boat, completely forgetting his own efforts from being swept up in hers. "You gotta tire him out, baby girl. Let him have a second to breathe and then tug him in bit by bit."

One hand settles behind her on the bench, he's looming over her shoulder with the fingers of his free hand twitching just near the spool in an effort to keep from interfering with her score. Whatever excitement he feels, this is all on her: catch or no catch.

She does what he says out of instinct; it's been a long time since she had question to do anything but. Though it doesn't mean her technique is anywhere near flawless -- Ellie scrabbles after the reel, fingers fumbling at it. She braces the bottom of her shoe near the side of the boat, as if it give herself more leverage to haul her catch in.

It's a series of pulls and reeling, pausing as it fights against the line-- "Oh man, it's gotta be huge," -- rewarded by the sudden bob of the rod as the fish is pulled free of the water, swinging wildly in their direction.

"Oh shit!" She drops the angle of her rod. The fish thuds, gasping, into the bottom of the boat. It's not a terribly impressive catch, but don't tell her that.

There's a momentary pause as the pair of them eye her catch, just before he claps her on the back and moves to pin the underside of its jaw between his thumb and forefingers. Given his heavy hands, it's a task to find enough room to pull the hook free and keep her fish from leaping out the boat.

"Go ahead and open that tackle box so your breakfast can't bolt on us." It's empty. Drawers and compartments all gutted to turn it into storage for anything they pull up.

Ellie's quick to bend down to fight with the latch on the tackle box, sitting back to give him space to throw the fish in once she has it open. "Go, go, throw it in!"

Once the fish is left flopping listlessly at the bottom of the empty box, she bends over it: the sides half closed and fully prepared to close them the rest of the way should the fish attempt to break out in a bid for open water. But it just flops, gills stretching as it gasps for oxygen.

"Now what? Do we chop its head off or something?"

"I don't know about you," Joel starts, easing back into his seat with his eyes trained on the sight of her huddled over the tin "but I'm not planning on cooking anything in the middle of a lake."

So the answer is no, Ellie.

"Shut the box, fix your line. Let's see if we can't pull up enough food for the both of us before we head back."

And he's let his own line go uselessly slack, curled up and looped across the water in a mess that threatens to tangle. Reeling it back and angling up for another cast is a process he doesn't take particularly slow, but then again, he's had years of practice.

Years of unpractice too, but it's like riding a bike: he's still got it.

The fish gasps and strains at the bottom of the rusty tackle box. It seems like a pretty awful thing to do: leaving it like that until it asphyxiates. Cruel and maybe unnecessarily so. But after a moment, she carefully closes the sides of the tackle box; she keeps one foot on each side, as much to steady herself as it is to stay away of the fish inside the box. Breakfast, Joel calls it. Breakfast.

She swings her pole around, reaffirming her grip on the handle - getting the angle sorted again. "Well maybe if you started pulling your weight around here, Joel," she starts to say, casting out her line with a snap of the wrist. It goes sailing out, hitting the water with a 'plunk.'

She teases, but there's something about how quiet she is beforehand that tips him off. Has him thinking that maybe this isn't serving as the best possible distraction from everything. Not that he can begin to wrap his mind around the how or why: he's not meant for deep analysis. Wasn't born for it or brought into it, and even in his working years he spent his days sorting business deals with a sort of short-sighted stubbornness that lost them more jobs than it won.

It's why Tess ran things, later on. Worked out better that way.

"Hmph. Give an old man a break every now and then. God knows I'm not as young as I used to be."

--or half as good at this.

"Suck it up, old man," she lobs back at him, settling into place as she gently nips her pole back every now and again.

For all Ellie's hesitation, the fish in the tackle box is a quickly forgotten reality. Like sure, it sucks and it seems kind of dick to not just kill it outright (she doesn't mind hunting; if it's not dead when you get to it, you make sure it is pretty quick), but some fish won't be the first thing to have a lingering death and it won't be the last. So eventually that slight line of tension between her eyebrows smooths and her pull on the line gets less snappish. After a few minutes of silence punctuated only by the lap of the water against the hull of the boat (eughk), Ellie starts to whistle a few reliable notes in succession.

He chuckles, wipes the edge of his chin with his forearm to swat away dust and a few early-morning insects. It's not hot enough for them to be out in full force, but there's always a couple that feel like skipping out on sleeping in. Ellie's whistling starts up while his face is still half-buried in the crook of his arm.

"All that noise is gonna scare the fish away."

She lowers her fishing pole by a few degrees and abruptly stops whistling - not that she stays quiet. "What seriously? I've got to stay quiet too? Euugh. People seriously chose to do this before everything went to shit?"

"Well I don't expect you to understand exactly why--" There's a tug at his line this time, but he barely seems to notice, holding the tension in the reel and letting the end jerk wildly back and forth. "but I imagine you'll have a better guess once we get these fish over the fire."

She can't really argue with that line of reasoning - if she's being honest, living off the wild with Joel has made for some pretty good eating. Hell of a lot better than the stuff bought with ration cards or traded otherwise. Meat, real fresh meat, is as much a novelty as fresh air, green trees and campfires as opposed to electricity.

"--shit, you got one! Quick Joel, pull it in!"

"Hold up now, he's a fighter." Which he feels through the low thrum of the line going taught against aluminum and plastic. Sharp and strong and-- if his memory isn't too far off-- big enough to be a damn good meal for the pair of them.

"Can't take a fighter down by bull rushing him and hoping for the best."

His reel doesn't budge, isn't rolled back. He leaves it where it is to go slack and pull, over and over again till the tugging starts to slow.

"What if it breaks the line or something?" She's pitched forward slightly, her own fishing pole forgotten in favor of staring out toward his bobber and how it ducks under the surface of the water in jerks and starts. "C'mon, he's totally gonna get away!"

He ignores her suggestion, fixated as he is on minding the water and what's beneath it. When he finally works the crank it's a slow, steady process: reel and wait, rinse, repeat. It'll pay off in the end, and the way he figures, it sets a good example for her.

"Alright, here we go." The bobber's close, near the edge of the boat, barely ducking low with the barest glint of silver beneath it catching in the sunlight. One last heavy yank of resistance and the line goes slack enough for him to pull back and find--

Nothing.

Well, shit. She might've been right after all.

Honestly, she's as convinced as he is - she watched the steady pull of the line coming in like a hawk, breath baited. "Come on, come on," she whispers as it gets steadily closer, abandoning her pole to grip the edge of the boat and lean over timidly to get a closer look and--

She swings a punch and catches Joel's shoulder-- "What'd I fucking tell you?" --and the boat rocks, making her sway back and scrabble at the bench, swearing mildly.

'Hmph' is all she gets out of him, though it's softened by the way she claws at the bench: she can be right all she likes, he ain't the one afraid of a boat.

Hook's still intact, though. Sinker, bobber, line all check out. Whatever it was, that fish was a smart son of a bitch to play the long game, too. Suppose he can't fault it that.

Joel loosens his grip on the pole, lifts his chin up enough to dodge the sun's blinding glare and tosses another lengthy cast out over a different stretch of lake. Truth be told, he's got no clue about the fish in this area-- whether they'd be biting so soon after winter, how big on average they are, whether the fish they're yanking up are native or introduced-- but he's never been the type to admit that in the first place. Joel knows what he's doing, and anyone that's argued against it (except maybe for Tess) gets a thorough, stubborn brush off.

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