Sunday evening and late Sunday night: Alex, Lorna, Nathan

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Lorna's studying, Alex is looking for dinner. Together, they fight crime. They talk shop.



The lights were low in the kitchen in order to discourage people from coming in but the smell of coffee was fresh. "I'm a stupid, stupid girl. I should have stayed in chef school and gone to work in McDonalds like I deserve. What the hell does that even mean?" Lorna pulled a bite from her second slice of cheesecake and frowned at her notes, highlighting a particularly strange passage then flipping pages in her textbook.

"A chef working at McDonalds...isn't that kind of ironic?" Alex asked, having caught some of what she'd said as he walked into the kitchen, set on something to eat. He hadn't had any dinner because he'd been busy working on a paper and Shiro had been...distracting him, so it taken longer then he'd thought. So now he'd come to raid the kitchen. "What in the world are you doing?" He asked as he headed over to the fridge.

"They have very strict food standards," Lorna said loftily, turning in her chair to look at Alex, "and very low requirements for their staff which is good because I am a stupid girl. I'm studying for a test in 422. Otherwise McPherson is going to fail me and I'm going to have to go crying home in shame. What are you doing here?"

Alex just raised his eyebrow before shrugging. "It can't be that bad. You know all this stuff anyway. And I missed dinner writing a paper for Larson's class." After grabbing a soda and an apple, he shut the door. It was then he saw the cheesecake. "Did you make that?"

"Yeah. Non-fat, low-cal cheesecake. It's practically good for you." She frowned at her notes, "It's exactly that bad. McPherson expects me to do better just because I can see the damn fields. It's not like they speak to me or anything but no, because I can see the invisible I'm supposed to be better at this."

He was already cutting himself a piece before she'd even finished telling him about it. Lorna had made it, that meant even low cal and non-fat it still tasted better then most of the best cheesecakes you could buy. Once he had a piece, soda and apple forgotten on the counter he came over and looked over her shoulder at the book. "It's memorization and application. It's not that hard." He stuck a bite in his mouth before pointing with his fork to a table of figures. "Concentrate on that."

"I don't even know what that is. I wrote it but I don't remember writing it. I think I got distracted by...." Lorna blinked like she'd just had a thought. There had been a pick-up soccer game on the lawn. Which was a horrible reason to have no idea what your notes meant. "I got distracted. It was a nice day."

At the look, Alex couldn't help chuckling. She'd been distracted same as he had writing his paper. Not that she needed to know that. "Well, you got it right anyway. Study that and guarantee you'll do fine, even for one of McPherson's tests."

"Wanna trade? I'll write your paper for Larson, I know what she likes. You can go take my test for me." She gave him a pleading look, "He'll never notice."

He gave her an innocent look, complete with fork sticking out of mouth. "Sorry," He said once he removed the utensil. "I already finished it. And somehow, I think he'd notice the lack of green hair. You do kinda stand out."

"Damn. It was a good plan too." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Give me back my cheesecake. You have failed me, failed and you do not deserve my non-fat, low-cal delicious confection."

"Nope!" Alex said as he half-turned away from her, protecting his cheesecake. "I helped you study! Told you exactly what you needed to know and this is the thanks I get?" He stuck his own tongue out at her.

Lorna sighed, "Cruel man. Get out of my sight with your contraband. I have twelve more hours and you're just mocking me." She smiled and gave him a little wave.

Laughing, Alex snatched back up his apple and soda. "Good luck tomorrow. At this rate, you'll need it." He said back with a grin and a wink before returning to his room.


Hours later, Nathan gets home from Tel Aviv and wanders through the kitchen where Lorna has claimed the table in the name of Academia.



He possibly should have stayed in the boathouse when he dropped his luggage off, Nathan thought dimly. It was late, quite late, but it was too quiet. He'd left Rachel with Moira for the week, and the sharp contrast between the empty boathouse and how the villa had been over the weekend was a little too much. Given what he'd seen on the journals when he'd checked them briefly in the boathouse, it wouldn't hurt to see what was going on in the mansion, off active duty or not.

Lorna sat at the kitchen table, playing with what had once been a fork and sipping coffee while she crammed for her exam on Monday. The fact that it was late hadn't really caught up to her, all she knew was that it was quiet for once and that was a very good thing for her understanding of crustal studies.

Nathan sensed another presence ahead of him, and paused at the kitchen door. "Evening, Lorna."

She sipped her coffee and threw the silver ball that had once been a dessert fork at him. "Oh look who came back. How is Ian?"

The silver ball froze in mid-air. "Cranky," Nathan said, leaning against the doorframe. "Snarling at everyone but Ani and refusing to come out of his room." He paused. "I heard about Sam."

"I'll call him and tell him he's being a pansy." She waved her free hand at the counter, "'Ro says that Forge is working on tracking him down, nothing for the rest of us to do but wait for now, same as always. There's live coffee on the counter. Don't drink it if you didn't sleep in the last 24 hours or I'll club you into a coma with my own two hands."

"Not much I'd be doing anyway. Took myself off active duty, remember?" Nathan took a step towards the counter - and paused, trying to do the math. "Uh. Do time zones count?"

Lorna glared.

Nathan rolled his eyes at her, and decided to risk it. "I was going to go in search of Charles. Coffee wins, though."

"Give me back my fork," Lorna said and tugged the still hovering ball sharply. "I'm still mad at you. Just so you know.'

"You threw it at my head. Bite me." The little ball shifted back in Nathan's direction.

"It didn't actually hit you, I didn't throw it hard enough for that. Or flip it around that stupid little EM sync that you always try to stop me when I throw things at you." The ball moved back to her an inch or two. Lorna turned the page on her textbook.

"That stupid little EM sync tends to work very nicely, thank you very much." He filled up a mug, then sipped at the coffee. "Ahh. Caffeine."

"Only because I let you get away with it. Of the two of us, you've got the power but I can actually see when you do it. You're like Wile E Coyote hiding behind a twig." Her coffee was getting cold. Damn it. "Is there anything left in that pot?"

Another mug floated over from the shelf, filled itself, and moved smoothly to the table where Lorna was sitting. "Ray didn't want to leave Tel Aviv. I think she enjoys playing with David and Mina's baby a little too much."

She finished the last couple swallows of in her mug then caught the new one in mid-air. "She needs more kids her age to play with. Babies do. That's why those...things...you know that Clarice was calling herself? That's why they're popular. Because of the baby thing. Child development people say it's important."

"Maybe I ought to be looking into daycare for a couple of days in the weeks she's here," Nathan muttered. "... wow, that's a horrifying thought."

"Or take her to play groups. That's how Cammy does it. Mommy and Me groups are really popular. The kids get socialization and the moms or, you know, dad in your case, don't feel like they're abandoning the kids. It's a whole thing." Lorna glanced up at Nate, squinted, then jerked the ball back sharply out of his hold.

Nathan gave her an irritated look, but let her have the ball. "Just don't throw it at my head again," he said. "And play groups, huh? I'll have to talk to Moira about that."

"It's a good idea. Gets you out of the office for a while, quality time with Rachel and a chance to talk to other parents. Yeah, Rachel's unique in a lot of ways but she's also a baby like every other one in other ways. God, what the hell did I mean when I wrote that?" She jabbed her pen at a particular point in her notes then just crossed it out. "I'm going to burn the building down and I won't have to take this test."

"No, you won't. You have many bizarre tendencies, but pyromania isn't one of them as far as I've ever seen."

"I should," she said petulantly and sipped her coffee. "Show them I'm not scared of them and their thermal wave induction theorems."

"That bad, huh?" Nathan said, pushing away from the counter and coming over to take a closer look at what she was doing. "I don't have much of a head for science..."

"Do you know even the tiniest thing about upper division geophysics, crustal variations or thermal wave induction?" Lorna raised an eyebrow at him though she let him look at her notes--meticulously taken and exactly like they were taught to her in high school.

"Not a thing. But it looks cool?" His lips were twitching slightly as he turned his attention from her notes to her.

"I'm glad my major, my passion, the thing that has dragged me across the country more than twice, looks 'cool' to you." Her tone was dry but she smiled at him for the first time since he'd walked in. Then she punched him. Hard.

It would have actually been better if he hadn't sat down about a minute before she'd done that, in order to get a better look at her notes. Then again, where she might have chosen to hit him if he'd been standing up probably didn't bear thinking on.

He was tired from the flight and what had been a very long weekend, and not paying particular attention to the small giveaway cues. So her uppercut took him right on the jaw - and knocked him out of the chair. He'd let go of his coffee cup, so amazingly, it didn't wind up on the floor with him.

"That's for not calling me." Lorna flipped her hair over her shoulder as she retook her seat and shook out her hand. "Do you have to have such a freaking hard head?

There was no reply from Nathan. He got up, quite slowly, and sat back down in the chair he had so unceremoniously vacated. His expression was mild, oddly contemplative, and he stared across the table and out the windows for a long moment.

Then, he punched her right back.

Unlike Nathan, Lorna didn't keep quiet as she and her chair went backward. She'd caught just enough of the movement to start moving out of the way but not enough to avoid the blow. She swore in three languages and rolled away from the table, holding her face.

She took her time getting back to her feet and watched him warily from out of arm's reach, not that that mattered hugely with a telepath. "Cranky too. Told you that you should get some sleep."

"I'm cranky. Who hit whom first?" Nathan rubbed at his jaw, then picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip.

"That’s different. You earned that. And you stopped my fork." She paused and tilted her head to the side, "Are you hungry? You haven't eaten probably except plane food."

"You don't need to feed me, Lorna." There was no real edge to Nathan's voice; he just sounded tired again. Still. Had he sounded anything but tired in the last two weeks? "Besides, I think I lost my appetite somewhere over the Mediterranean. I blame the plane food."

Lorna scoffed, "You don't know me at all, do you? Of course I need to feed you. What will you eat when I set it in front of you? This'll keep me from studying and every time you help a student procrastinate on her studying an angel gets hammered."

"Drunken angels. There's a thought." He looked sideways at her. "Ian threw a lamp at my head."

"Good for Ian. Answer my food question or I'll force you to eat whatever I feel like making and Nathan? I have tripe. Don't make me use the tripe on you."

Nathan looked up at her - then shrugged, rubbing at his jaw again. "Sandwich or something?" he asked, not wanting her to go to much trouble for something he wasn't sure he'd eat. "And there's nothing wrong with tripe, on special occasions..."

"Sandwich it is." Lorna frowned and waved her hand a bit. "Maybe I'll make it with tripe. Then it can be a special occasion right now. The occasion of you punched me for no good reason at all."

"You punched me first, woman. I get tired enough of people poking at me because they don't think I'll respond in kind, I don't need my friends doing it too." That would have sounded sulky, if he hadn't sounded so worn.

"Cranky." She slapped a sandwich together and dumped some chips onto the plate next to it. Lorna pondered for a moment then added a pickle as well. "There you go, just like any corner deli."

Nathan examined the pickle. "I didn't want to come back," he said, and took a bite. "But I was glad to sit down on the plane, or part of me was. How perverse is that?"

"Yeah, well, you're a freak, what else is new. The chips have no trans fats, tell me how awesome that makes me?" She set her chair upright again and retrieved her pen then sat down.

"Moira would be cheering. She finds my diet appalling these days." Nathan tried one of the chips. They were good. "You're a freak too, by the way."

"Like, uh, duh?" Lorna stole a chip, "Now eat and hush. I have to ace this test or I will have wasted every year of my life since high school began."