Does Russia Even Have A Volleyball Team?

[masterofmidgets]

Another NaNo class character sketch - this one of a 22-year-old volleyball player who grew up on the run from the Russian mafia. Yes, I /know/. I kind of want there to be more of this, if only so I can try to capture that feeling I always have watching surf movies that show them on the beach in the late afternoon, with the heavy, pink-golden ocean sunlight.

 

For his 22nd birthday, Alex's teammates throw him a party on the beach.

Mike opens up his surf shop for them, and the girls fill two long tables with party snacks and barbeque and coolers of beer, surrounded by a sea of mismatched folding chairs. An impromptu volleyball game breaks out on the sand, shirts against skins and all rules suspended. When the wind blowing in over the water brings a chill to the air, they drag out barrels full of trash and driftwood and set them on fire, laughing every time a particularly loud pop catches someone unaware.

When he thinks it's gotten loud enough that no one will miss him, Alex takes off across the shore. There's a small cove a few minutes' walk from Mike's that's too secluded to attract much attention even in tourist season when the beaches are packed, and Alex works his way there, clambering over the ridge of rocks that hides it from view.

Alex staggers coming off the slope, and lets the momentum carry him into a flat-out run, sandals slapping against the wet sand until the beach ends and he flings himself into the surf. He comes up spluttering and swearing at the cold September water, flounders until he is finally stretched out on his back, gasping for breath as the waves lap at his feet.

When he was 14, the beach had been just like this.

His 14^th birthday he had been huddled in the front-row seat of a Greyhound bus, intermittently sleeping and reading comics through 8 separate states, twitching with muscle cramps and trying to ignore the smell of piss and beer that might have been coming from the man behind him or the bus itself. But he’d sworn when he left Missouri that he wouldn’t stop until he could taste the ocean salt in the air, so he stayed on, pulling his coat tight around him and watching the road stripe fall away outside his window.

The last stop, the very end of the line, had been this tiny southern California town, hardly big enough to have a name, and only a waist-high concrete wall between the bus shelter and the sea. He stumbled off the bus with his duffel bag, so excited he was almost sobbing.

Even with the taint of rotting seaweed and motor oil from the highway, the air felt fresh and clean, whipping his hair around his face in sweat-sticky strands.

He’d clambered over the low wall, and started running as soon as his feet hit the ground. Coarse grass stung his legs and his sneakers sank as he half-fell down the uneven dunes, startling a flock of birds into cackling flight when he let out a joyful shout. Somewhere along the way he lost his bag, and when he hit the water he lost his balance, drenching himself from head to toe in salty seawater.

He lay on the beach, waves lapping at his feet, and watched the sun go down over the water, and knew he was in paradise.

Alex misses the innocence of being fourteen, when he’d thought he could have a whole world of golden California sun and cool Pacific water, sleepy afternoons and firelit nights, with no reality to intrude on it.

I don't know what it is with me and hooker!fic lately, but I'm pretty sure this is leading into how Alex hustled to support himself in California.