No Need To Ask

Lifestyle

 It becomes a habit of sorts. To be honest, Raven doesn't quite know why she keeps coming back. At first it was just to return Luna's jacket the next day, but some way, somehow, just talking it out even though Luna doesn't say much back makes her feel freer. Always at four o'clock on the same bench on the boardwalk. It starts out with serious things, and then deteriorates to her complaining about her schoolwork, professors, part-time jobs, how grossly in love Lincoln and Octavia were the last time she went out for dinner with them, and eventually just how lazy Raven is, because going to the supermarket to buy food is hard.

Luna raises a brow at this new revelation. "I understand laziness, but that might be a whole new level."

"Alright, your honor. You may judge my lifestyle, but I doubt it is much worse than yours. After all, you're sitting here talking to me, aren't you?" Raven shoots back. Her words lack the bite that the wind provided. Fall had rapidly descended in the last few weeks, making the oceanside winds even chillier. Luna has once again draped her coat over Raven's shoulders, although Raven suspects that Luna has started wearing more layers than necessary for this specific reason.

Luna graces Raven with a quirk upward of her lips. "Yes, sitting here and talking to you every morning is one of the worst lifestyle decisions I've made in my life so far", Luna sighs dramatically to enhance the effect of her sarcastic words. "I might just have to rethink it."

Raven snorts, "Like you have anything better to do." It just slips out, and she realizes immediately after that she probably does. The silence hangs.

Thanking is certainly not Raven's forte. There was never anyone to thank growing up, so it certainly wasn't something she was used to doing. In the end, it didn't seem like Luna was after gratitude to begin with. "What about you?"

"Me?" there is a protective edge to Luna's voice. Luna's face has hardened a bit. Perhaps it had been imagined, but it almost seemed like Luna was leaning away from Raven.

"How do you spend your days? You hear all about mine", Raven answers, choosing her words as carefully as she could. It wasn't like Raven was a master of words. Wires and coding? She was your gal. Poems and persuasion? Not so much.

"I sleep on the yacht. I don't go into work until dinner time so in the summers I spend it on the beach." Luna glazes over the details in her own mysterious way.

"And the rest of the seasons?" Raven prompts. A glimmer of hope sits in her chest that shouldn't. Maybe, just maybe...

"I volunteer at an orphanage when I feel like it. Live in my house", Luna says. She looks away from Raven deliberately. Somehow this seems special although the information is trivial. It is a private person telling things about her own life. It is easy to imagine Luna with kids. Smiling, laughing, and playing, perhaps teaching them about things like marine life, swimming, or even just flowers that grow around the playground. For one second, Raven can even imagine Luna playing with her soon-to-be-born baby.

Then what was said registers. "Wait. You don't live in the yacht? Then why do you keep passing by here?" Her eyes bore into Luna. She had simply assumed that Luna was on her way back to her yacht every morning. This would mean that this was no coincidence after all. In fact, it would imply that Luna was purposely coming to listen to Raven rant every week.

"To make sure a certain woman doesn't freeze herself to death." Luna stares right back, her brown eyes warm and welcoming in a way Raven had never known of before.

At this moment perhaps because how stable, reliable, and comfortable like the constant lapping of warm waves against the sand in the summer, Raven musters the courage to ask. "What are you doing later today?"