Ivory Hill had spent the majority of her adult life running. Throughout her twenties and the first part of her thirties it was from bombs and bullets. Now, at thirty six years old Ivory was running from something that she could never truly escape fr...
The next morning at breakfast Ivory sat as far away from Grace as possible. She was jammed between Wainfleet and Fike, trying to drink mug of coffee as they jostled her and threw pieces of bacon at each other.
"Great." Ivory muttered as half a rasher of bacon landed in her coffee, splashing the scalding tan liquid all over the table.
"Wainfleet, move." Grace glided up behind him. Despite Wainfleet's high status even he didn't dare disobey Grace.
The man got out of his chair and grabbed his plate, moving towards the other end of the table.
Grace collapsed onto the bench beside Ivory, putting a plate of fruit and a glass of water down on the table in front of her.
"What's this?" Ivory asked, shooting her coffee a mournful look.
"I didn't want it." Grace shrugged. "I thought you'd want it instead."
"I've already got breakfast, didn't you see?" Ivory picked up the fork that Grace had brought her and removed the bacon from her coffee.
Grace rolled her eyes.
"Thank you." Ivory said quietly, picking the bacon off of her fork and setting it down on a napkin.
Parker, who had been sat at the head of the table, caught sight of Grace and got up, striding over to her.
"Ah, Grace, I need to speak to you." Parker ran a hand through his hair, pushing it away from his face.
"What?" Grace demanded.
"About the progress with the blue monkeys. You've been running your little puppet show for months now and I still haven't seen results."
The redhead bristled instantly. "If you're referring to relations with the Na'vi then you fucking me over has set things back by months." Grace spat.
"You didn't seem to have any problems with me fucking you before." Parker said smugly.
Ivory, who'd been part way through having a drink choked, accidentally coughing water all down her front.
"Well Parker, we all do stupid things when we're desperate." Grace said coolly. "If you want relations with the Na'vi to improve then you've got to stop fucking shooting at them."
"You're running out of time Grace." Parker turned and walked away.
Ivory couldn't help but stare at Grace, of all the people she could picture her being with Parker Selfridge was one of the last on her list.
"I got over things with Parker a long time ago. It was just something to do. Well, someone to do." Grace amended. She kept her voice casual but she couldn't hide the fact that her cheeks were flaming. "Anyway, he used to be very different." She added, almost as an afterthought.
"Hot damn." Ivory murmured, looking from Grace to Parker who had now returned to his seat.
"Don't act like you've never messed around with someone before, I've seen the way you look at Chacon."
"I wish, but no. She's hot, yes but she isn't my type. She's too..." Ivory paused for a moment, spearing a piece of banana as she searched for the right word. "Affable, I'd get bored. And she's too dutiful, I prefer women who are defiant, they're much more fun."
"Well there had to have been someone at the army base then." Grace persisted.
"There were a few people." The dark haired woman shrugged. "But that was just the standard stuff, it never led to anything. The army isn't exactly a hotbed of love and long, committed relationships. Funnily enough knowing that you could die at any point kind of kills any romance factor."
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Ivory was yawning when she trailed into the lab that night. One of Trudy's door gunners had run into a slinger and had gotten splashed with poison which had meant that she was in the medical bay for hours as she struggled to fix the fourth degree burns that the creature had left him with. Ivory had wanted to ask Grace to look through the work that she had done on slingers but for once the redhead wasn't in the laboratory.
Tigger leapt up and settled himself down on one of the desks beside a microscope.
"Watch out for that slide Tig, if you knock it Grace will be pissed." Ivory ruffled the cats fur and bent over, looking down the lens of the microscope.
"What are you doing?" Grace demanded, slamming into the lab.
Ivory jumped back as though she had been burned. "Well judging by your tone of voice not the right thing."
The older woman rolled her eyes and walked over to the microscope, checking the slide. "At least you didn't mess up my sample. And get that cat away from my work."
