xp_logs | Angelo and Laurie, Saturday afternoon

Laurie calls at Angelo and Forge's suite and ends up forcing Angelo outside for a picnic.

Laurie knocked on the door to Forge and Angelo's suite, she'd not been able to find Forge in his lab and she wanted to ask him a question about whether he was up for another driving lesson on Tuesday afternoon. She was almost ready to take her driver's test really but she wanted to get a few more lessons in before going for it.

In that case, it was a mystery as to where Forge was, because it was Angelo who answered the door, dog loyally following him.

"Forge isn't here. Don't know where he is. Sorry."

Laurie crouched down and gave Joyita her customary hug and scratched behind her ears, before looking up at Angelo with a searching look. "Still hermitting, I see. You eaten anything recently?"

"Yes", he claimed, looking back at her with a kind of stubborn bemusement. "An' I'm not hermittin'. Still goin' out to work.

"You might want to shave then," she said as she gave Joyita one last ear scratch and then got up from her crouch. "Just how much work have you been doing?"

"I'm keepin' up. Nate hasn't had any complaints, nor've my professors." Of course, it was debatable whether Nate would have told him if there were any problems with his work, right now.

"And between work times?" she asked, her voice taking on a more compassionate edge, if no less definite in her questioning.

It was what she did really, took people in hand if she thought they needed it, and while Angelo was more then enough of an adult to take care of himself, she thought that perhaps right now he needed someone who wasn't above being bossy if it was required. The journals had obviously shown that Angelo wasn't coping well with the injury to his friends, and the more he was left alone to brood, the more he'd simply put off doing anything but working.

"Eat, sleep, go to the hospital, look after Joyita", he replied. "There's time enough for that between work, but I just had midterms an' Elpis never stops..."

It was worse then she'd thought, she wondered if she should call Amanda and schedule an emergency 'come and kidnap your boyfriend before he obligations himself to death' intervention. Not that looking after sick friends was only an obligation but there had to be time for yourself somewhere in there, or you got strange...or turned into a ninja.

"You haven't seen much of 'outside' other then to walk Joyita then, I take it?" she said, eying him with a decidedly assessing look.

Amanda had already been there, he hadn't been left completely alone, but there hadn't been much in the way of kidnapping. Except, of course, that surprise double date or demands to babysit Rachel. "...I go to an' from the boathouse? An' I went out yesterday."

"I see," Laurie replied, and the simple words held an absolute sea of meaning behind them, starting with 'I see you're being a hermit then, despite protests to the contrary' and going right up to 'if you don't get out more soon, you're going to turn into a Orwellian morlock and start eating people'. "Well, you're going out now. Meet me at the front door in say, ten minutes with Joyita and don't even think of refusing. I know both Mrs Espinosa's and Amanda's numbers and I will not hesitate to use them if you make any fuss."

Angelo gaped at her. "...did you seriously just threaten to call my mom? You play dirty."

"Angelo, there's something you should really know about me." Laurie began, turning to walk back down the stairs toward the kitchen, she needed to get together the food for the picnic in the sun she intended to force on Angelo, since he wasn't about to go out by himself. "I always play dirty."