I have three cats, a squirrel that thinks he's a cat, and a dog, but the dog will stay at the Ranch
Who: Lara and Dani What: Meeting a new roommate, part 1 Where: A coffee place When: Last Friday Status:Complete Rating: PG
Lara got to the predetermined meeting place a little early. She wanted time to read an article on a find in Southeast Asia (Asia in general was of huge interest to her). She got lost in it, pretty quickly.
It seemed like every time Dani set up a meeting with someone, even if she got there right on time, the other person was early. It'd happened so often of late that she actually wasn't even phased by it when she noted Lara in one of the booths, face buried in a periodical of some kind.
She walked over and plunked down in the seat across from the woman, then gently hooked her finger over the top of the article and started pulling it downwards, "Hey. I'm Dani."
The Brit looked up and then smiled warmly, setting her paper down, with some obvious reluctance. “Hi. I’m Lara. Sorry, I get a little distracted when it’s something really good.” She had to bite her lip before she started gushing about the find. Nobody found that endearing, except Roth or Sam.
Dani smirked, "I used to get that way with a good book, not so much with the newspapers. What are you reading, anyway?"
She glanced around to the front of the paper, trying to read the masthead. The smell of the coffee in the shop was extremely delicious though, and she found her eyes straying to the menu nearby. Her eyes were also straying all over Lara, though she tried to keep that under control. The british woman was adorable and had great curves.
Lara bubbled over with enthusiasm. She lit up. “Mm! There was a find recently. An ancient temple in Thailand. Well a re-find. They found it once a dozen years ago but managed to lose the location. There was a concerted effort using advances in satellites to find it again.”
She seemed oblivious to Dani’s attentions, more enthralled by the subject matter than anything else.
"Wait..." Dani wrinkled her brow and brought her attention back to Lara, "Okay, how do you lose a temple? Once it's found, doesn't its location go onto a map or get written down or something?"
“If you lose the map, or some of the people who were there mysteriously perish...It’s really easy to lose a location, especially deep in the jungle!”
"Does that really happen? I thought mysterious disappearances while hunting down ancient ruins only happened in video games or in the movies," Dani raised both of her eyebrows up, and leaned back in her chair a bit. Archaeology was more interesting than she originally thought.
Well, she'd been a pretty big fan of history in the dreams, and had taken over some of the history classes over at the ranch, too, so it wasn't that big of a stretch.
“If you ask a family friend, it was a common occurrence.” She still had no idea how her father even knew a man like Roth, but she was glad she had. “Sometimes it’s something as simple as greed. I don’t really know and the article doesn’t really explain enough.”
"I guess that makes sense. There's a lot of money out there if you're the first person to register the discovery or something, right? And then there's all those natural dangers. Jungle environments and stone..." Dani nodded her head.
Now that she thought about it, there were a lot of reasons why someone might disappear into a ruined temple like that and not return, "Animals making the place their dens... slippery rock, rotted wood, moss, debris... yeah. I can see that."
“Before I ever went on my first hiking trip, that friend of mine showed me how to look out for the signs. Nothing as serious as tracking, but I know some basics,” Lara replied. “I’ll have to hire an expert, I can’t expect him to do everything. I’m sorry, I took over the conversation!”
"It's okay! Hiring an expert is definitely best if you're going out to find a dig site that hasn't been established, yeah. I used to be a park ranger, we dealt with injured hikers a lot who took on too much or didn't know what to look out for in this environment. Even saved the Black Widow's butt one time."
Dani grinned. She was still proud of herself over that one.
“Really? I do need to start watching that show,” Lara mused. People kept mentioning it. “I don’t get much time for watching the telly. You were a ranger? Maybe I’ll hire you.” She grinned.
"Hah, well, you'll have to argue with Wrex about that. It'd probaby depend on what time of year you decided to go, too. But it might be fun, I kind of miss being a Ranger sometimes. I gave the job up after some unfortunate crap happened and I couldn't go into work for a while." Dani wondered how much of that she should admit. How much disclosure did her roommate need? Probably enough to know that she was a recovering alcoholic.
She decided to work that in somehow. Gently. If it came up.
“Wrex is your employer? Lucky bloke, then.” Lara sipped at her coffee, feeling her already good mood improving further. This all might work out as good as she hoped. Maybe better. “So… we should get down to business. Rent and rules and all that. I have a mate that will be coming down eventually if I have any say in the matter, but there are four very large bedrooms to go around.”
Dani nodded, then darted her eyes to the side and held up a finger, "Hold that thought."
She came back 3 minutes later with a very large sparkling iced latte And an herb bagel slathered with cream cheese, "OKay. Sorry, the coffee smell was driving me crazy and I hadn't gotten anything yet. So alright, rent, rules, bedrooms. I'm sure one of those is the master, and that'd be yours, right?"
“That’s okay, I should have offered something. And yes, I’ve already staked claim to that. I...well its an inheritance house, but the money is locked away. I wanted to make it on my own, you know? I could have gotten a flat or something, but it was here, so I thought I might as well use it.”
Lara took another sip of her coffee. “I don’t mind a little noise but not too loud, and if you bring a boy home I’d like warning, and be very careful of the items in the study.”
"I'm generally pretty quiet, but I do come in at odd hours sometimes, so I need to be able to come in and not worry too much about breaking an after hours ordinance. Though it's not like I'd come home at 3am and start screaming at the top of my lungs, either. If there's another room with a view of the ocean, I'll pay extra rent to claim it. Unless you're reserving that for your friend."
Dani thought maybe the friend was very special to Lara, so she wouldn't mind at all if that's how it played out. It's not like her house had much of a view but forest or other houses anyway. She took a long sip off of her coffee, and added, "Are you going to be okay with the idea that it might be a woman I bring home and not a boy?"
She blinked her eyes, the expression on her face one of stark surprise. She hadn’t even considered that idea, and suddenly the way Dani had looked at her earlier was crystal clear in her head. “Oh. Uh. No, of course not. There’s nothing wrong with that. I never had a problem with that. That’s actually… good on you!” Lord, she was blushing wasn’t she.
Lara was, in fact, blushing, and it was pretty cute, but it was also obvious that the idea of girls kissing girls was completely foreign to her. Dani decided to ease way back on checking Lara out.
She laughed a bit, and held up a hand, "I like both, but thanks. I should probably warn you of a few things, and if you don't want to room with me I'll understand, but I can find you some references. That'll prove to you I'm not that scary after all."
Well not foreign, one didn’t get pulled out to pubs and clubs without seeing all manners of people snogging. But snogging in general wasn’t something that Lara tended to think about. Much.
“There’s something more controversial than snogging ladies?”
"Yeah. I'm a recovering alcoholic - but I won't ever ask you not to keep alcohol in the house or drink it in front of me or anything. Live your life how you'd live it. I also have a medical condition that allows me to legally smoke pot. I can show you the card and everything, but I don't like to rely on it and I'm not a complete pothead."
There, that was out of the way. Dani picked up her half of bagel and decided now was a great time to put something in her mouth so she couldn't talk anymore.
Lara stared at her a bit incredulously at first, then shrugged a shoulder. “All right, well that’s a lot worse than I thought it would be, so that’s out of the way. How does three-fifty and your share of the utilities sound?” She could do with worse roommates, and she really hated how big that house was. “Anything else? Allergies? Pets? Pet allergies?”
That rent was more than fair. Dani nodded a bit while she finished chewing, then held up three fingers, "I have three cats, a squirrel that thinks he's a cat, and a dog, but the dog will stay at the Ranch, and everyone else can stay there too if it's a problem. They're settling in there pretty well. I don’t have any food allergies or pet allergies, and I cook some pretty awesome food. So there's at least one good thing about me. With your permission, I'd want to set up an archery target on your back lawn somewhere, but that's really all I can think of."
“A… squirrel?” Lara said, her mind trying to wrap around that. “The cats are no problem if we can keep them out of the study…. I have no problem with archery, I’ve done some shooting myself though I’m really rusty.” She’d be liable to miss the target more often than hit it. “Cooking is good, though. We won’t starve.”
"I teach the kids at the ranch, so I don't mind giving you some pointers sometime if you're game for that!"
Dani was more excited that her roommate was a fellow archer than she was worried about her pets... though she circled back around to that topic after taking another long sip off her sparkly coffee, "Doom's a rescue. He thinks he's a cat. He doesn't really make a mess, but he may stow away in your cargo pants and end up in your car, or sit on the kitchen counter and bitch you out until you give him trail mix. The cats I can talk into staying out of the study pretty easily."
“So I’ll have to stock up on trailmix,” Lara replied, still a little lost at the idea of someone having a pet squirrel. “And I’ve never heard of cats that could be herded quite that easily. You must have an amazing way with your tongue.”
"I just have them very well trained."
There were still some things that Dani wasn't sure she could say outright. Mentioning her mutant powers was definitely on that list, given how much Lara already had to take in about her.
“That’s still pretty useful.” Lara held out her hand. “Roomie.”
Dani grinned, and took Lara's hand with her left one. It was her dominant hand, but it was also the hand that didn't hurt like a bitch. Which was good, because she preferred giving people a firm handshake whenever possible, instead of a shaky wimpy one.
"You won't regret this."
Lara felt a flutter of excited butterflies in her stomach. She was actually looking forward to this.