Work Text:
“Good morning!”
Joan pulls her pillow closer against her face and scowls. Why did she let herself be talked into this?
The idyllic weather that had greeted them when they had first arrived had given way to oppressive midday sun that burns away anything and anyone that wasn’t indoors or under the cover of the jungle’s foliage. Not that Joan isn’t perfectly content to stay in the ashram, mind you, but honeyed words—it was there this morning, by the waterfall past the ravine, we can look together? Tomorrow morning, before it's too hot?—had coaxed her into agreeing.
“C’mon Jo’, it’s almost eight! D’you know how long I’ve been awake?” The slightly petulant voice moves closer to Joan, until she can feel her mattress move. Joan grips the pillow tighter but it’s not quite hard enough, as she feels it yanked out of her hands. Slowly, she angles up a single bleary eye at the nuisance; high-arched eyebrows and a cheery smile swim in her vision.
“This better be some fucking bird,” Joan whispers, her voice raspy from disuse.
“We’ll see nothing if you keep stalling,” Paula leans aside, picking up the glasses from the bedside table and placing them onto Joan’s head. Joan’s vision clicks into place.
Paula’s usual white hairband hides underneath a straw sunhat, and a pair of thick, dark-grey binoculars hang around her neck. She hands Joan a bottle of suntan lotion. “Here, we can’t have your face going as red as your hair.” Paula’s upturned lips shift into a proper smirk, and Joan’s scoff gets Paula to snicker in response.
Joan is still bone-tired, having spent most of the night alternating between failed attempts at meditating and failed attempts at falling asleep, yet she manages to shove Paula off her bed.
Not too far from the ashram, alongside the banks of the river, is a massive banyan tree. Its thick branches splay out in every direction, like a pincushion chockful of needles. Paula sits up on a branch, nearly half a metre thick, that is almost horizontal—wood grazing just above the ground. She stares upwards out of a pair of binoculars, happily smiling with her mouth ajar. Her head pans around, with occasional jerks of sudden movement as something catches her eye, hair swaying along all the while.
Joan leans against the trunk, arms folded. Paula considers this trip a vacation. Not that Joan cares, of course, though it’s irksome that Paula thinks she can pretend. During the Maharishi’s discussions, she’d open those doe-like eyes just a bit wider and tilt her head to the side in contemplation, but Joan has always been able to read the minute quirks of her brows and lips—Paula’s hiding boredom. She wonders if Fraser has caught on to those signs of feigned interest too; she can picture Paula appraising some particularly rubbish exhibit with exactly that look on her face.
Joan sighs. Paula seems to be trying her best to meld the binoculars over her eyes. Joan creeps ahead, her movements going unnoticed on account of the faint buzzing of cicadas and Paula’s absolute immersion.
Suddenly, Joan springs ahead, her face right into binoculars’ line of sight. “Any particular bird you’re looking for?”
Paula flinches, then smirks. “Huh, it’s got the hooked beak of a Hornbill,” she says, giggling.
“Watch it,” Joan sniffs.
Paula lowers the binoculars. “Ah, but I didn’t say she wasn’t fetching now, did I? In fact, I’d wager she’s just about the prettiest bird in the forest,” Paula says, sliding the binoculars down, her mouth sliding into a lazy smile.
It’s a charming sight—Paula always is when she puts on a show—but Joan feels a twinge of unease from the unfamiliarity of it. Granted, her Paula had always been a good liar, always quick to misdirect or feign ignorance to her advantage, but it seems she’d picked up some new tricks from London. It’s the novelty of her forwardness that almost gets Joan to think she’s being sincere, but thankfully Paula picked a lie too bold-faced for Joan to fall for.
Still, Joan flushes.
Wind rustles the tree’s highest branches, with the gaps between them allowing for slivers of sunlight to pace and swirl below. Momentary flashes of light land across Paula’s face, causing her hazel eyes to brighten as she gazes right at Joan.
Just as Joan finds a snide response to indicate that she understands Paula’s teasing, Paula whips her binoculars back over her eyes. “Oh look, there’s the monal!” Joan turns to where Paula is looking at, and catches a spot of bright colors in the clearing by the base of the waterfall, on the side of the river opposite to them. She pushes her glasses up and squints, making out … a stupid-looking plump bird with gaudy feathers.
Joan snorts. “Now we’ve really seen it all—that’s a rainbow-colored chicken. I can’t believe you made me get up for this.”
“Ah c’mon, toughen up,” Paula clucks her tongue. “It looks wonderful, you just can’t see it well enough.”
Paula rests her forearms on Joan’s neck, bringing the binoculars over her eyes, striking her glasses once with a sharp metallic clink. “How’s it look now?”
Paula’s breathing tickles Joan’s neck; she exhales involuntarily. After a moment to regain her composure, Joan realizes she’s looking at nothing but near-turquoise water, since the binoculars are angled towards the center of the river. She puts her hands over Paula’s, adjusting the binoculars to correct the line of sight. “Still pudgy, but its feathers aren’t a total mess. It’s a squashed peacock, I suppose.”
“Hmm, you’re getting distracted by the fan—peacocks aren’t exactly skinny themselves. And I think that’s hardly got any bearing on beauty anyhow, y’know.” Paula moves in closer as she speaks: she feels Paula’s stomach against her lower back, her breasts against her collarbone.
“Though, I think it’s close to a chicken, so you weren’t too off before. They’re in the same family or summat. Y’know, I read about it in the—”
Paula continues yammering on about some birding book she’d read on a flight in their touring days, completely unaware that her words fall on deaf ears. Joan hears just her own heart hammering, and she thinks she can make out Paula’s heartbeat too, on account of, y’know, Paula being draped all over her.
“That’s real clever Paulie, sometimes you aren’t as daft as you look,” Joan musters.
Then, Joan turns around in place, and finds her nose a hair away touching Paula’s. Joan’s nearly lying against the wood, her elbows angled backwards to prop herself up against the branch, and Paula is right up against her, the ends of dark hair brushing Joan’s neck. They lock eyes as Paula’s pretty lips settle into a pout at the jibe. A few seconds pass and Joan is absolutely still, but Paula must’ve noticed the blank look on Joan’s face, since Paula’s stare turns questioning and she begins to move her face away, which suddenly fills Joan’s heart with a frantic panic to do something, anything, so her lips dart up to kiss Paula.
It’s a stolen kiss, really, since their lips meet for hardly a second before Joan pulls away—any longer and it’d be tough to play off as a joke. Paula is frozen in place, head tilted slightly askew with a startled look on her face.
Joan wants to explain, but instead of an alibi, all Joan can think about it is I wish I could’ve kissed you longer. I wish you’d have kissed me back. I wish that meant to you some small bit of what it did to me.
Joan swallows. Her throat is dry. She can’t say anything and that’s alright, as there’s nothing she can say.
Paula's still waiting, though, with raised eyebrows for Joan to say something, but Joan looks away and shuts her eyes.
Joan can’t stand it. She knows that expectant look and she hates it.
Joan hates that Paula pretends to give up control when she already knows what Joan will do.
Joan hates that Paula has long seen through her; any admiration of yesteryear sunk by her noticing Joan’s indecisive cowardice.
Joan hates that she’s stupid enough to think for a moment that Paula cares about this at all, when it’s really that Paula’s playing dumb to hide her disdain.
Joan knows she’s stupid; she's gotta remember that Paula isn’t fucked in the head like her. Paula’ll string along with those queer toffs till they’ve got nothing to give and leave .
Joan has nothing to give. Nothing but hatred at Paula and herself and Paula’s smug condescension for TM and her own pathetically empty visions and Paula’s thousand voices and her own grating screeching and Paula’s pretty smile and her own infatuation with this vapid bitch’s fucking smile and—
Paula’s hand pushes up Joan’s chin, and her own lips to meet Paula's, and a kiss absolves them.