Laurie and Kyle.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Laurie finds Kyle spending his afternoon in the trees, they speak of
dinosaurs, ducks of doom, have a tree climb and manage to embarass
each other nearly to death.



Laurie had wandered a little way off the path and into the woods,
moving toward a clearing she'd found a few yards from the archery
practice field. It was a beautiful day, and light was filtering
through the tree canopy, coating the ground in waves of light that
seemed to shimmer slightly as the light breeze moved the leaves above.

She had her bow slung over one shoulder and the quiver she regularly
used banged against her left hip as she walked, a strange comfort
since her experience with the Dinosaurs.

Being comfortable again with the forest had taken longer than Kyle
liked. He missed climbing, but the hushed quiet was a little more than
he had been able to deal with. He'd finally gotten sick of it and had
forced himself to sit in one of the trees for an hour reading and
doing some of his back history homework.

He'd heard Laurie approaching, although the air scrubber masked enough
of her scent that it took a moment for him to realize who it was. And
he figured it'd be pretty rude to just sit up in a branch and not say
something, at least. He rustled the branches a bit more than he would
have when alone, to give some kind of warning and then dropped to a
lower branch so as to be seen.

Laurie looked up sharply, eyes tracking the sound before her brain had
even had a chance to process what had happened. She relaxed when she
saw it was just Kyle, sighing in relief. This past couple of weeks had
been fairly tense and while she didn't go so far as to make sure she
always had people nearby, being alone did make her just that touch
more alert then it might normally.

"Hey Kyle, you now owe me a life, you realise?" she said, smiling up at him.

"Raar. Growl. Quack. I am a devil duck of doom." Kyle said,
pronouncing the animal noises as words, instead of making the noises
themselves.. "Dude, did I ever send you the link to what that thing
was? Because I totally found it on the internet." He flipped around
on the branch and then dropped to the ground.

"Noooo. I don't think you did. I assume the reference to ducks and
devils could be my clue to it's name though?" Laurie replied with a
snicker at Kyle's antics.

It was good to see him joking, she'd been worried that he'd be
uncomfortable around her, considering how much Jennie hadn't seemed to
want visitors. It could have just been a Jennie thing though.

"It's got some super-serious science name, but apparantly the guys who
study extinct animals have a sense of humor." Kyle stood up from the
crouch he was in. "So they call it the Devil Duck of Doom, or
something like that. It's pretty funny. And I don't blame them. I
mean, dude. I never want to meet one of those again."

"I never want to see any Dinosaurs again." Laurie replied fervently.
"I mean, animals usually love me, and well, I'm sure the Dinosaurs did
too but in a 'you smell good enough to eat' kinda way rather then the
'Will you be my friend if I look at you cutely' way. Which is still
weird but at least it's not trying to eat me."

"I think the dinosaurs looked at all of us as tasty morsels, instead
of best friends forever." Kyle said. "I don't have wacky pheremones
and they were trying to make -me- lunch too." One had technically
succeeded, even though it had died probably before even swallowing his
fingers.

Laurie nodded, looking around at the clearing. She had noticed some
large oak trees aways back that she hadn't ever had the nerve to climb
by herself. Now might be the opportune time to give it a try, if she
could convince Kyle to help her.

"You know, I saw some really large oak trees back there. You up for
some climbing? I warn you, I may get stuck and need carrying down.
However, should this happen, there must never be mention of it ever,
unless it's to say we were practicing our King Kong interruptive dance
for Mr Wagner's class."

"If you get stuck, I'm taking a picture with my phone and sending it
to your roommates." Kyle said. "And when am I -not- up for climbing
things?" Ignoring the fact that he could think of several times when
he hadn't actaully been interested in climbing anything. All those
times involved kidnappings or having missing fingers or toes.

"Hah! To which I will promptly swear revenge will be had and then put
pudding in your underwear drawer." Laurie replied, heading deeper into
the woods in the direction of the oak trees.

Kyle considered this. It seemed like a pretty invalid threat, since he
could always do laundry again, but blackmail pictures lasted forever.
"I can live with that. But, I prefer vanilla. Chocolate will make me
boot." No sense, after all, in having pudding he couldn't eat.

Once at a particularly climbable tree, with enough low branches that
Laurie could pull herself up on, Kyle went up, via his usual method of
jumping to a branch above his head and pulling himself up and over.

"Nu-uh, if it's revenge, it can't be tasty revenge. It has to be
something like, tapioca pudding, or mushy green pea flavored pudding."
Laurie responded, taking a gander at the tree branch above her before
jumping and catching the branch. She hung for a moment, and then
twisted and hooked a leg over the branch to help pull herself up. It
wasn't the most elegant of moves but it did do the job. She'd never
been much for gymnastics, or things like that.

Kyle made a gagging noise at the idea of green pea flavored pudding,
going so far as to lie back on his branch and pretend to be dying.
"Dude, that's seriously gross. I mean, that's like, grosser then... I
can't come up with anything grosser then green pea flavored pudding."
He hooked his knees over the branch he was draped on, and flipped
over, looking down at Laurie. "And would be totally worth it if I had
blackmail pictures. Just sayin'."

"Pah! I shall have to think of something suitably...Squirrel!"

Laurie paused in her climb, not wanting to scare off the small animal
as it slowly crawled across the branch, sniffing at her fingers before
nuzzling them softly.

The squirrel didn't seem like it wanted to pretend Laurie was a walnut
and crack her head open. And she didn't look like Veruca Salt anyway.
Kyle watched it carefully anyway, he'd never seen a squirrel do
anything but try to run away from people. Of course, all the squirrels
he'd seen were usually being chased but someone. Him. Anika. Ray.

The squirrel chittered at her, and although she couldn't understand
it, Laurie smiled. It would appear that she'd made a furry friend,
albiet a very strange furry friend. "I wonder what he was saying." she
said, watching as the Squirrel darted away and back up the tree.

"Please don't let your large friend with the teeth eat me?" Kyle
suggested. "That's what I'd be saying if I was a squirrel." He
watched the squirrel retreat, and let go of the branch with his legs,
dropping down to catch the branch that Laurie was on. "That or "Oh,
hi there. Do you have any nuts for me?"

"Animals always like me, it's kinda weird." Laurie replied, snickering
at Kyle's comment. "What do you get from me? I mean, you're not an
animal, but you're a feral, right?"

Kyle pulled himself up onto the branch and sat crouching with his
hands between his feet. "Like what, smells?" He shrugged, and sniffed
at the air. "I dunno. You smell like you, but... okay, most of the
time, people smell like things that aren't people. Cars, food, houses,
whatever. You don't as much. You just smell like a people."

"They do? That's...well, weird. I always assumed everyone just smelt
like themselves. Is it because of what's around them, or is it like,
when you've got a memory you're more likely to remember it when you
smell something that reminds you of it?" Laurie asked, positioning
herself better on the branch and letting her legs swing back and
forth.

"I think I'm explaining this badly." Kyle said. "Everybody has a
different smell, but some of that is because of stuff they do. Like,
Mr. Summers always smells a little bit like grease, because of the
plane and his bike. And Sam always smells like baking bread, because
his power does weird stuff. But you ... don't as much. You smell like
a human first, and then all the other stuff kinda, under that."

"I wonder why?" Laurie said, shifting slightly on the branch and then
allowing herself to move backward slowly till she was hanging upside
down from the branch. They weren't terribly far off the ground here,
so if she fell, she wouldn't hurt herself. "Do you, um, know if
there's anything else that's different? Between me and the others,
that is?"

Kyle went silent for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain
what he was thinking wihout dying of embarassment, or killing Laurie
from embarassment. "Well, besides your power? Because, well, some
pheromones have a smell. Like, people smell different when they're
scared. And, um, girls, when they're, you know..." He looked up
towards the sky, and did not finish his sentence.

"Noooo. When they're what?" Laurie asked, wondering what he was
getting at. What did girls do that could make them smell different?
Oh, oh GOD!

~Please let me self combust. Please let me self combust.~ Wishing for
self combustion wasn't working. "You know, on your, um, thing. Cycle.
Monthly... " Nope. Still no fire. That means he wasn't immolating
himself. Kyle was geniuinely disappointed. "That."

Laurie didn't think she's actually lived through a more embarrassing
moment. She thought back through her life, nope, nothing as awkward as
this moment. She was so busy thinking about how embarrassing
everything was, she forgot to hold onto the branch.

"Ow..."

"You okay?" Kyle had dropped off the branch as soon as he saw Laurie
fall, twisting in the air to land on his hands and feet. She was
talking, and he didn't smell blood or brains - not that he'd know what
brains smelled like, but he was pretty sure he'd know it if he smelled
it. "You can move your neck and aren't like tingly or anything?"

"There shall be no speaking of tingling!" Laurie replied, grinning up
at him from where she lay. This was one of the more interesting days
she'd had at the mansion. "But yes, I can move my neck. Just, I think
I bruised my glutius maximus."

"I meant in the paralyzed way. What did you mean?" Kyle asked, trying
to ignore that the still shortish hair did nothing to hide how red his
ears were. Why did girls have to be so damn weird? It was so much
easier when he was dating a guy. Jay was embarassing, but he was never
all sneaky about it. "No, wait, don't tell me. Can we pretend this
conversation didn't happen and that I told you you smelled like
peanuts and that's why squirrels wanted to be your friends?"

"As long as you help me down to Med lab so I can get Dr Grey to make
sure I didn't break my tailbone, then we shall never speak of this
again." Laurie replied, sitting up and wincing as she felt a twinge.
She hoped she'd just bruised it like she thought, having to explain
that you broke your butt falling out of a tree would be mortifying.

"Never -ever- again." Kyle said. "Do I need to carry you or
something?" Not that the idea wasn't kind of appealing, but that just
led to bad thoughts he wasn't going to think, no sir.

"Um, I don't _think_ so, but maybe you can help me up and we can see?"
Laurie replied, making grabby hands in his direction. "Although, if Dr
Grey asks how I managed this, we are so telling her I was trying to do
a double summersault and it all went horribly wrong, or something like
that."

Kyle bent down to help Laurie up, watching to make sure she wasn't
going to fall over dead or have her head roll off or anything like
that. "Attack squirrels." he suggested. "It's already justified and
everything. I mean, Ray thinks the squirrels are evil..."