Who: Lara and Lorna What: Lorna pays a visit, there's talking, bubbles and such When: Recently Where: Croft Manor Status: Complete Rating: PG-13 for drug use.
Except for a brief run to starbucks, Lara had taken to hiding out in her house. She had a ton of room, and if she wanted to escape more there was the beach and the docks. And keeping her private thoughts away from Sam was of the utmost importance. Right now, at least, Sam was out, Renji was at work, and she thought Dani was at Chemo, so she was alone in the house with the cats and one troublesome squirrel.
Lorna was being a busy body. She knew it, but she didn’t particularly care. She knew Dani was off today. With their help she wanted to do something nice for Wrex, since he was having a hard time. Really the list of people who weren’t having a hard time began and ended with her and Alex, as far as she could tell, and only them because they weren’t capable of being surprised or annoyed at the bullshit that came with living in Orange County anymore.
She knocked on the door and hummed a little while she waited, crocheting a star shaped motif out of extremely fuzzy yarn.
It took a moment, but Lara answered, a nervous tic in her thought bubble as she looked at Lorna. Please don’t be anything embarrassing, please please. “Oh, Lorna!” Oh thank god… “What a pleasant surprise. Do you want to come in? Please don’t look at my thought bubble if you can help it, I can’t always control the thoughts that go on in there, but the person who makes me unable to control it isn’t home.”
Lorna giggled. The bubbles were funny. “I can’t control what my brain thinks at all. I’m kind of glad I don’t have those bubbles, I’d fill a room in a minute. Is Dani home? I mean, you’re nice but I actually came here to talk to her.”
“She’s out at…” Lara gestured at her wrist. I can’t imagine what that must be like. I’d almost rather take the puncture wound in my stomach. Still bothers me. I don’t really want to compare. She couldn’t help the flash of a man’s face, dying after she’d shot him, and shook her head to clear it. That Russian still made her skin crawl.
“Oh no, I’d rather have cancer.” Lorna made a face. “A puncture wound to the stomach means a slow, agonizing death. Cancer’s slower, but there’s hope. If you don’t treat a stomach wound pretty fast there’s nothing that can be done.” Hooray for field medicine classes! Thankfully she’d never had to help with that sort of thing.
Lara grimaced. Then she pulled up the left side of her shirt to show the scar on the left half of her stomach. “I dreamed I fell on rebar. I washed up on this island, and someone had hung me upside down along with a bunch of bodies...it was horrible.”
Lorna whistled. “See, when I dream of horrible things it’s normally intangible, or me doing the horrible things.” Like infuriating a boat full of people and using their anger to become stronger, and swimming to Muir Island from almost Antarctica somehow.
She put her shirt down, and looked at her hands. The bubble over her head had flashes of gunfire and hanging corpses, alters and men trying to strangle her. “It’s not the only scar. I’m picking them up nightly.” Pleasant thoughts, Lara, pleasant thoughts.
Lorna was glad she didn’t have thought bubbles of her own. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse.” Now she wanted to smoke. Dammit. “You mind if we go outside to talk? I don’t want to stink up your house.” Because her emergency joint was suddenly non-optional.
“Sure. I’m sorry. My mind is…” She waved her hands. “I keep trying to think about my work, but my dreams and other things keep coming up. You’re lucky my mind isn’t thinking on certain people right now.”
“Oh?” Lorna asked with a laugh as they headed outside. The beach outside Lara’s house was a lot like her little slice of beach, and it made her smile. She waited until she was downwind of the door to light up.
“I’m attracted to someone and trying very hard to hide it, because I’m fairly sure neither of us are ready for that. Since she lives with me, thought bubbles are betraying bastards.”
“Why don’t you just sleep with her and get it out of your system? The only way to prevent temptation is to succumb to it, according to Oscar Wilde.” She smiled softly.
Lara laughed, and shook her head, blushing. “I ah...that’s…” Her mind went to images of Sam and she clapped her hand over her face. “It’s more complicated than that! It’s not worth it if...I couldn’t live without her. It’s always been Lara and Sam, or Sam and Lara. I have to make sure we’d be okay, after. And I don’t really do casual.”
“So go out with her.” Lorna said with a shrug. “Make it a thing. If it’s always been you two then you’re pretty much already at the ‘annoys everyone by being incredibly into each other’ stage of the relationship.” Not that she’d know. She did casual just fine. It was just a lot nicer to be with Alex than anyone else ever.
“Hunh…” Lara thought about that. “Maybe.” I need to think on it more. Rejection would be terrible.. “There’s an event coming up. I’m going to hit up some donors. Sam has been prepping me to schmooze.”
Lorna snorted. “I just smile at people and talk really excitedly about whatever I’m doing. And then someone usually leads me away before the poor person’s brain fries.”
“I think that’s Sam’s job.” Lara laughed. “I just need to convince people that their hard earned money can go to something worthwhile.”
“Yeah, well, obviously you two already work well together.” Lorna said with a giggle, wiggling her eyebrows at Lara.
“Yeah, we do.” Lara smiled fondly. She didn’t mind Lorna smoking, and she liked the feel of the beach beneath her feet. “I’m going to need to rely on her, after all. She’ll be documenting everything. We’ll just need to keep you out of the good shots.” She winked.
Lorna nodded. “Sure, I’ll just hang out by our camp and work on my tan.” She chuckled and took a seat on the dock, her legs dangling over the water.
"Oh yes, a dig is just like a vacation," she said, sardonically.
Lorna finished her joint, exhaling slowly. “Honestly I should probably not be involved if you really do want to video tape the whole thing.” Beside, if there was a lot of sensitive equipment she could mess up the readings by being present.
“I’ve had a camera in my face for the past six years, thanks to Sam,” Lara admitted. “So I’m afraid I’ve grown used to it. She still turns it off when I ask her to. But I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“We’ll see how it goes. Worst case scenario I can recommend another geologist who’s as good as I am, though you’ll probably think he’s less attractive.” She grinned at Lara, then closed her eyes and let herself lay flat on the dock. The warm wood felt wonderful to her.
“Yes, I suppose we’ll see how it goes.” Lara clasped her hands behind her back, looking out over the ocean. She wondered if her dream island even existed. Part of her wondered if that had even been Yamatai, though she didn’t think it was likely.
“Didja ever really look at the clouds, Lara?” Lorna asked, lighting another joint from her non-emergency supply. She offered the second puff to Lara.
Lara looked at the joint, then at Lorna. Then she looked up at the clouds, and took the offered puff. Maybe things would be better, a little high. It beat the hell out of her painkillers from her stomach wound.
Lorna waited patiently for Lara to join her level of consciousness. “I mean, they hang there, just. . . defying gravity. That’s water up there, just chilling, waiting to water fields that wouldn’t know a drop of water otherwise.”
“What about..underground aquifiers? Just...sending water through the earth like...like veins.” Oh, she was a lightweight with this stuff!
“But not everywhere.” Lorna pointed out.
“Oh. No, I suppose not.” She giggled lightly. “I suppose not…”
Lorna grinned and sat up. "We should have ice cream."
“Ice cream sounds bloody fantastic.” Lara looked over at Lorna. “Lead on, Macduff.”