Haller/Lorna, middayish

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Lorna plays caretaker to an ungrateful and crazier than usual Jim.





"Nicole looks ridiculous," Lorna commented from her place at the end of Haller's bed. She was wrapped in a comforter, thumbing through a magazine and occasionally reaching over to poke the seemingly comatose figure under the covers. There was a tray on the nightstand with a thermos and a high covered dish. "You'd think that someone would eventually learn that the big frizzed out hair isn't so much attractive as it is horrifying, particularly on a skinny white chick like her."

Talking to the obviously sleeping was just a good way to pass the time since he refused to actually wake up and listen. Lorna wasn't actually a patient person but she could fake it.

The return to consciousness was slow and full of resentment. Oh god. Who was trying to talk to them right now? He'd left the infirmary for a reason. The point of crawling off to die alone was the part where you died alone.

"No," came the muffled response. The pile of blankets cocooning what was still technically Jim constricted even tighter. "No hair. Brain liquified. Sleep and crazy now."

"Oh, wow, you're actually responding. I'm shocked. Sit up and eat your breakfast. I'll leave you alone if you do." Lorna didn't even look away from her magazine, obviously settled in. She didn't actually expect him to do as she said. It was more in the nature of an opening offer. The haggling came next, just like going to the swap meet.

"No. Too. Crazy." The heap of blankets slowly contracted into a ball. "Just leave us here to die." The faster the better. My brain is going to fall out she's got five seconds to get off the bed before I set it on fire Mom's on Muir but Sissy's here! She's here and she's got food! I want chocolate chip cookies and what if we can get Lorna to make cookies and AHHHH the next time someone asks Jim to telepathically contact an aggregate consciousness the answer is NO!

"No, I'm too crazy to eat. You're just too crazy to remember what you like to eat." Lorna moved on to a new article. "Ew, new punk. The way they shot this makes this model look enormous. She's like a triangle with enormous hips. What the heck was the photographer thinking? Get up, eat."

Jim growled, seriously considering a good kick off the bed. Possibly all the way through the wall. He also knew that would be far more trouble than it was worth, or so said the logical part. Whoever the hell that was at the moment. The fact he couldn't place it was how he knew that twenty minutes of arguing about this was brainpower he simply did not have to spare.

"Fine," the telepath said, dragging the covers away to expose a rumpled shirt and a truly violent case of bedhead. "But if we cave in your skull, you were totally warned." The threat was slightly dampened by the fact that although Jack and Cyndi were the ones whose sentiments were making it out, inside he was having some problems maintaining tone. Sissy Sissy YAY!

Well, that had taken less time than she'd expected. Lorna closed her magazine and smiled cheerfully, "I'm duly warned. There's that rice and butter thing you make. Also real food with actual redeeming nutritional value." She waved at the tray and it lifted, moving closer to him slowly. "There's tea in the thermos because I figured I'd get yelled at for coffee."

"Tea is for when your brain explodes. So a lot." Jim went for the kateh. The dish's contents were warm and familiar-smelling. Lorna had used one of the ceramic bowls for it, too. It was black and glossy. Heavy things are nice.

"We leaked," Jim informed his friend, picking up the fork. "From the ears." Intently, the young man prodded the sticky yellow substance in the bowl. There was only the slightest beat before he added in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, "It was gross."

"Sounds like it. Feel free not to share how that happened." She rearranged her comforter, tucking around under her bare feet with their brightly polished toes. "Eat, don't just poke. You know now it makes me all sad when my hard work goes to waste."

"But Lorna, what if I want to share? What if we want to share so bad? No. You don't have to listen. I already did that with Charles." Though there were some things he might have wanted to address that hadn't quite gotten out in the debriefing. Like the bizarre moment when Amanda was giving him a light afterwards so he could ground himself in some kind of physical activity and he'd realized fully half the people around him were doing exactly the same thing.

Jim tried to get his brain somewhere back in the same universe as this conversation. "No. No more sharing for us. Unless you don't make me cookies. Then I'm going to share. Hard." He got through a mouthful of rice before assessment of that sentence got out. Jim fixed the younger woman with a stare stained in a muddled patchwork of green, grey, blue and brown. ". . . I don't even know where that came from."

Lorna blinked at him. "I'd say that you were a crazy person but that lacks so much impact given that you, you know, are. I'll make you cookies. No sharing. Plausible deniability is the cornerstone of my sanity at this point. I don't want to know." She held up her magazine in self-defense. "You also need to take a shower."

"Eating. All focus consumed by. No more multiple tasks." Then Jim recalled something even an almost total loss of psychic cohesion wasn't powerful enough to deter him from. "Except to change our ringtone to something not 'Gay Boyfriend.' I'm not kidding."

She started to snicker then to giggle until she fell over with helpless laughter. "Not my fault!" she protested, "Not my fault. I didn't do it." Not that that would make it stop being funny. Nothing was ever going to make it not be funny. She kept hoping he would call her just because it was funny, though he'd managed to avoid it so far. But...hee!

"Yeah. I know. Cyndi's been working David's complete emasculation for something like ten years now. But still really please change it because I got a couple more days thinking about black nailpolish and fish so pretty!!!! And right now it would be really great if I could get attributed some shred of masculinity." Jim pointed to his head to emphasize the point. "Brain. Leaked."

Lorna stuck her tongue out at him. "Oh come on. You're not actually allowed to have insecurities about being man enough when you're talking to a girl and she's in your bed. Even if she's not a supermodel." She curled up on her side and propped her head on her arm, green hair spilling over his covers. "But in deference to your leaky brain, I'll change it. Realize that this is way more than Lobotomy Boy got out of me though. He only gets scorn and mockery."

"Thank you. Jim totally gets enough scorn and mockery without any outside assistance. We can handle that all by myself." No. No crazy-calling the supermodel. Sanity first. Why did Doug and I get brainmelt and Betsy only got powers-strain? That's not fair. Then don't be a pussy, pussy! Jim sighed. This was going to be a fun few days.

"I definitely want cookies."