Hanging out in Santa Barbara with Rae

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet's surprised to realize it, but she sort of likes living with another woman. Rae's very neat and courteous, and Tuffy and Baby seem to love her. It's been a very harmonious overnighter, one that Juliet hopes will extend into a happy morning.

After feeding her pets, she wakens the sleeping woman with four words: "do you like beaches?"

At least it's a unique way to wake up.

Comments

[sunbaked_baker]

That's one of the good things about being used to getting up at ungodly early hours: when one wakes up at four with a body telling you it's time to go bake cinnamon rolls, you can tell your body that you're on vacation, and go back to sleep.

The second awakening is accompanied, though, with much more stretching and yawning than the first.

"Hmmm? Beaches?" Rae blinks herself awake, moving to sit up. "Apart from the other morning's walk, the last time I was at an actual, ocean-beach for beach-related activities I was... like, twelve or so, for family vacation."

There's a smile forming, as Rae moves more firmly towards being fully awake. "We going to the beach today?"

This would be an affirmative answer to Juliet's question.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet's gone into enthusiastic girl scout mode at this point. "There's one four miles from here, they have a carousel and a midway on the boardwalk...and we can take the dog!"

Baby raises one ear from his basket, but doesn't move.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Spartan," Rae grins, stretching once more before getting up. "Sounds like fun to me. Just let me get dressed."

The other thing about being used to getting up very early for work - one learns to be very time-efficient in getting ready in the mornings. So it's not long before Rae is dressed and brushing out her hair.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet nods happily. "They don't need me at the station 'til six." She drew the evening shift, and Lassiter demands punctuality, but there's plenty of time between now and then and she's going to soak in every bit of rest she can get her hands on. Tuffy and Baby's needs are tended to once again before she and Rae head out to Juliet's little compact and they're driving down to the beach.

"I don't know if you need sunblock," Jules says as they pull into a vacant space. "But I have a tube in my beach bag." She smiles as she opens her own door. "Isn't it beautiful?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Lucky," Rae remarks with a smile. "I'm always on the morning shift at the bakery, have to be there at 4:30. Then either the lunch shift or the dinner shift. At least until I find an apprentice."

Then, there will once again be one or two mornings a week when she can sleep in.

Sunshine spends the drive to the beach looking out the windows at everything, trying to make sure she doesn't miss anything, and occasionally asking questions.

"Sunblock is thankfully unnecessary," Rae grins as she gets out of the car, idly eyeing the rather shiny motorcycle parked nearby. The skeggy-looking flame motif make her snicker as she turns her gaze on the beach. "Oh man, I totally call dibs on the alicorn when we get to the carousel."

Because there is no if, only when.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

"That's got to be difficult," Jules says, not unsympathetically. "My hours are all over the place, depending on where I end up in the duty roster."

"I wasn't sure," she admits, in regard to the sunblock. "I turn into a slice of roast beef if I don't slather the stuff on." The motorcycle is indeed shiny - she's reminded of Shawn for just a moment before she turns back toward Sunshine. Before them stretches miles of sand and ocean in every direction, as far as the human eye can see. "Would you like to take a swim first?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"I've never gotten sunburned in my life, though with how much I stay out in it I should be leather by now," Sunshine grins. She can't help but wonder vaguely if she could protect humans from sun damage like she can protect a vampire from going up in flames.

SPF Ultimate Plus. The faint glimmering of the sunlight-web set into her skin and hair are a tiny bit brighter, out in the glorious southern California sun.

"Definitely!" she replies, emphatically, with a grin. "Just forgive me if I don't go too far out. I'm not a strong swimmer, and it's been... about fifteen years since I've swam in an ocean."

Rae is, however, a very strong sunbather.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet nods thoughtfully. Sunshine seems so fair, it's a wonderment that she's not burnt to a crisp.

"Try to avoid the bottom - it's a little rocky," she says.

Jules is wearing her swimsuit under a loose wrap dress, and it doesn't take her long to shed it and drop it into her beach bag before heading toward the ocean. "Stay close to the shore," she encourages, before jumping into the current. She, meanwhile, is a strong swimmer, and an excellent one.

[sunbaked_baker]

"No worries there - I plan on staying strictly at the surface," she grins, settling her belongings near Jules' beach bag before heading into the water, herself. Sunshine is glad she thought to pack the sunset-colored bikini she'd gotten at Milliways for the lake party earlier this year. The water is fantastic.

She wades in and swims just to the point where she can't touch the bottom any more, and doesn't go too far past that point in her swimming.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet watches her for a moment, just to make sure she's staying true to her word - she was a lifeguard as a teenager, a girl scout, and can't let her conscious rest long enough to allow her to simply head off and do it.

Juliet swims out a bit further, soaking in the warm air, the ocean breeze, the gloriously warm water. When her legs ache for relief, she paddles toward the shore.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine is content to float, mostly, gently buffeted by the waves. The sun is warm on her face and shoulders, already powerful though it hasn't yet reached its zenith. It's soothing in a way she hadn't fully expected, a release of tension, just to float and soak in the sun and surf.


A little while after she notices Juliet heading towards the shore, Rae breathes deep, and follows at a liesurely pace.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet envies her peacefulness, honestly. It's not something she surrenders to easily. A few moments later she's lying on the beach, letting the sun dry her water-spackled skin.

After she and Sunshine have had time to dry off, she asks, "Pretzel time?" she suggests playfully.

[sunbaked_baker]

Peace is something Sunshine has learned to take without question, wherever it presents itself. It is a precious and rare thing, and she guards jealously what peace she can find. It always goes too quickly.

A swimsuit does not hide her very unbakerly scars the way regular clothes do. As Rae comes up the beach from the water, heading for her towel, they're clear: the knife-scar curving beneath her collarbone, the thin burn-scar looping her neck like a long necklace chain, the mostly-healed bruises, the faint scars on her arms and shoulders of scrapes and tears and teeth.

Rae is thankful for peace when she has it, because she often doesn't. She is also thankful for having a flufy towel to wrap up in.

"Hmmmm," she says, tilting her head and making a show of giving the question much consideration. "A pretzel, huh?" Then Rae smiles, nodding. "...Sounds like a plan to me."

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

She's lucky she didn't say that out loud - Juliet's protective nature would have been triggered, and she'd be stuck being smothered for the rest of the trip.

Juliet noticed them, now, playing with the ends of her wet hair. "They don't play nice with you, do they?" She wants to kick their asses, but that wouldn't likely help Sunshine's case. "Lots of pretzels," she says, getting up. "And lemonade?"

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine's replying laugh is hesitant but real, as she wrings out her hair so it doesn't trail water down her back. "Well, to be fair, I don't play nice with them, either."

Vampires and humans might as well be cobras and mongooses. Mongeese. 'Play' is the furthest possible thing from what they do - both are fighting for their lives.

"Oh man, lemonade would be perfect. I'm parched - I had forgotten how much effort it takes to fight waves while swimming."

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

"I hope you collect their heads." Juliet would. She's a tiny blonde ball of vengeance when she's upset. "What happens after you kill them?" Might as well focus on the positive aspects of slaying.

"Between that and the sun," she says, as they make their way toward the nearest vendor and pick up a cup, "we're both getting pruney."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Sadly, their heads would really clash with my decor," she grins, wryly. "After we finish doing whatever - sometimes they do show enough enlightened self-interest to listen to what we have to say - I go home and take a very long, very hot shower, and try to get some sleep."

No mention of what they do - if anything - with the bodies.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

"Country modern, eh?" teases Juliet. The lemonade is ridiculously refreshing as she slugs it down. "I don't get that much splatter in my line of work...usually," she amends.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine sips the refreshingly cold lemonade, focusing on the crisp, sweet-tart flavor and the warm sunlight beaming down on them. No mist. No chill. No blood.

"There's all too much, for me. Little else. No paperwork, no official reports or anything. Just... being out there, doing what they say they need me to be doing. I like to think it's making a difference, even if I end up doing three times as much laundry and my water-bills are sky-high."

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

It's quite good, isn't it? And quite fresh, to Jules' pleasure. She keeps sipping as she listens to Sunshine. "I'd say you were itching for something to do, but we both know that's not it."

They use her as a punching bag too often for that to be the root of it all.

[sunbaked_baker]

"For something to do?" she asks, not quite following. "No. If anything, I'm itching for some sign... some sign that what I'm doing is making a difference."

All that not playing nice. All that splatter. It has to be making some sort of impact, surely.

"Or, I don't know," Rae looks down at her lemonade. "Itching for a week to go by without me having to work bloodstains out of my clothing."

Sunshine isn't a cop. She doesn't represent the system - doesn't even believe in the system, because isn't that why she's doing this? Because the system can't handle the problem? She's a baker. It's not natural for her to have to wonder whether or not she got all the blood out from under her fingernails before she starts kneading dough for the morning's cinnamon rolls.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

"It has to be," Juliet offers. "You still have a world to come home to." Juliet is the system to the core - or, she likes to think, the system's best face.

[sunbaked_baker]

"SOF says we've got about a century left, if things keep on like they are," Rae murmurs, idly stirring her lemonade with the straw.

"Irony is, if I keep fighting and using heavy magic like I am," and if she doesn't get killed, she doesn't add, "I'll still be around in a century to find out if I made a difference or not. Longevity is one of the side-effects of heavy magic-use."

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

A hundred years is better than nothing, but it's not enough. "So if you keep using magic you might live close to forever?" She knows of some actresses who would kill for that power. "And it's the only way to keep turning the doomsday clock back?"

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine looks a bit uncomfortable. "Not forever, but I have it on good authority that people who steep themselves deeply in their magic tend to last noticeably longer."

She sips her lemonade, not thinking about her father's side of the family. Her grandmother.

"My local SOFs are the ones who asked me for help - they should know how desperate the situation is, if anyone does, and they asked me. A baker. And then covered for me with their boss, who is terrifying. Pat, Jesse, Theo, and Aimil are the only ones who know that I'm helping SOF. I have to hide it and what I can do - though even my SOFs don't know all of it - to everyone else."

And Jules has likely seen how poor a liar Sunshine is.

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet takes all of that in with curiosity and visible interest.

She cringes. "What happens if something happens to you?"

That's the only thought that pops into her head.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine shudders, feeling cold even in the warm, California sunlight.

"I don't want to think about it."

[craftylildoodlepumpkin]

Juliet cringes. "I'm sorry. I'm just very worried about you."