the_lioness | (no subject)

(no subject)

Alanna's decision to hold her morning Shang practice by the Milliways lake can be boiled down to one simple fact: it isn't raining here. The obvious extension of this is that it is raining in Tortall, great big buckets of the stuff, soaking through even the thickest cloaks and rushes, forming inconvenient puddles of questionable depth and muddiness.

Less obvious is that she is also avoiding three children who have spent the better part of a week inside.

On the beach, happily dry and free of nagging questions, the Lioness extends her left leg and right arm and smiles a bit smugly to herself.

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We're sad to report that the peace and solitude the Lioness is currently enjoying is quickly coming to an abrupt end.

Very quickly.

The door from the bar opens with such force that it slams against the back wall of the building. This noise, while loud, is nothing when compared to the primal scream that follows next.

Raph, it seems, is not a happy camper.
At the moment there's a tie over which is running off of him more; waves of frustration, or water from the torrential downpours currently flooding Tortall.

Shang is nowhere near as effortless as Liam always made it look. Balance, once lost, is not easily regained. Raph screams; Alanna nearly topples over in the middle of a kick.

Her frustration is equally vocal, though the snarl she directs over her shoulder quickly transforms into a snort when she catches sight of Raph.

"Look who had enough sense to come in out of the rain."

"Ain't my sense that kept me out in it in the first place!"
Rage is so very close to the surface, and is only made that much closer to uncontrollable by the fact that he's wearing wet socks.

Raph hates wet socks.

So one by one sopping layers of Tortall appropriate garments are stripped off and left where they lay as Raph makes his way over towards Alanna. Until, finally, he's standing there in boxers and a tank top.

Alanna watches.

Why not.

"No loin cloth?" she asks, mildly.

Eyebrow arched, she turns back around and does the kick again, correctly this time.

"In that weather? What're you, high? For Goddess's sake, 'Lanna, it's nicer in SCOTLAND than it is in Tortall."

And he's not wrong, it's a lovely day at Faux Hogwarts.

Without another garment or boot to hurl to the ground, Raph finds himself at a loss of inanimate object on which to take out his aggression. So he holds his hands out in front of his chest and pretends as if he's crushing roughly the size of a bowling ball, and just as dense.

"She don't make no fuckin' sense," he says eventually.

Ah.

The she in question might not, but suddenly Raph's behavior does. Alanna covers a smile with a low cough.

"What has the lovely Abigail done to bedevil you now, my friend?"

"Gone batshit insane!"

If his exasperation has a limit, he hasn't found it yet.

"I didn't do nothin' an' all she does is throw shit at me. When she's not flat out givin' me the coldest shoulder she got on hand."

Literally. There was this one time when actually threw a pork shoulder at him.

"Goddess. Perhaps doing nothing," Alanna hazards, "was the wrong thing to do?"

It does seem to be something of a trend with him, she thinks. Crouching down, she plucks a piece of grass and eyes him. Then, realizing this isn't the best angle given his current attire, she slowly stands with a thoughtful frown on her face.

"When did this start?"

Raph's glare at Alanna's logical approach to the situation is mighty.
Some might even go so far as to say fierce, but that's only if that one were to ignore the fact that Raph is currently standing in a field in his underwear.

He's just about to answer with his usual, How the fuck should I know? when a bit of mental math gets in the way of his insolent retort.

"She was fine until Magellan was born."
Better than fine, if Raph remembers that day correctly. Things were going quite nicely, and then Leo showed up.

His eyes narrow.

"Leo," he sneers with a sneer he hasn't sneered since his late teens.

Again, "Ah."

Valiantly, Alanna refrains from saying well, he does have a nice head of hair. Her life is so hard sometimes.

"Explain more," she suggests in that way that sounds more like an order.

Raph takes a deep breath and then exhales slowly through his teeth.
"Leo," he says only after he's counted to ten, "arrived unannounced. We were behind closed doors, an'...well, you know we weren't exactly raised to knock."

Alanna considers this for a moment.

"The children were," she points out thoughtfully. "It didn't seem to take."

True, if ultimately unhelpful.

"I can't imagine that bothered Abigail."

He snorts back a laugh before he can stop himself. And try as he might, the smile that forms doesn't go away. There's something about laughter that has always managed to tame his frayed edges.

"No, not by a long shot, actually. Leo looked like a deer caught in headlights."

"I'm not surprised." It's dry. Her children provide very detailed reports, when it suits them. "Did he know about Abigail?"

"Yeah and no. I mean, he knows we're together, he just didn't know we...er..."

Here's about the point where his ears go pretty much neon.

"...were together."

Yeah. It's about as bad as you could possibly thing, Alanna. And then some.
Poor, poor, Leo.

"What did he think you did together?" Alanna asks, leaning forward to frown at his ears with almost scholarly interest. She's never seen quite that shade of red before, and she knows red. "Weave blankets?"

Clearly, poor Leo should learn to knock.

"Though Thom would have suffered a heart attack in similar circumstances, I'm sure."

Oh there were blankets involved,to be sure. "I think Leo prided himself on not thinkin'bout it. He looks down at his feet, and then off into the distance. As if something far away has caught his attention.

This eye-contact aversion technique is one of his trust mainstays.

"Heart attack, huh? What would've happened if the door he was bangin' his head on opened and he fell on top'a a nearly naked Adam?"

Just, you know...hypothetically speaking...

The lengthy silence is broken by a strangled sort of laugh.

"You did meet Thom, didn't you?"

Blink.

Blink.

Wince.

Oh that's right, Thom.
Raph pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Forget I mentioned it."

Naturally, she does no such thing.

"He kissed Adam once," she muses, squinting at the lake. "I saw. Of course it sent me into a temper, but it was also a little... strange. It was like watching myself, only I don't think I'm quite that rough."

Beat.

"You'd think it would be the other way around."

Alanna looks over and gives him a nonchalant shrug.

"No, I really wouldn't," he says through clenched teeth. "On account of me not thinkin' in that direction at all."

She studies him for a moment.

"I thought Leo was the bashful one."

Temporary distraction can be useful.

His hands slide from his face. His jaw cracks ever so slightly as he exhales.

"He is, so when Abs opened the door an' he fell in on top o' her, he damn near freaked. I can only imagine he jumped up like a rat on fire, but I was already high-tailin' it outta there to get my hands on Thomas."

"...Thomas?"

Alanna's eyebrows shoot up and her lips give a subtle twitch.

"I wouldn't think that would be your first reaction."

"Why not? Leo wouldn've been bargin' in if Thomas didn't up an' tell him where I was."

Someone, it seems, has missed Alanna's joke entirely.