And so the Salara begins. Since there are other awesome fics that emphasize on the "but you're my best friend" plot, I'll be focusing on another kind of conflict that was inspired by the wonderful Carmilla. By the way, if you don't watch it, you should because canon f/f.
"That's it." Lara carefully eyes Sam's form. "Put your hand lower, here." She reaches out her still bruised hand and patiently guides her downwards. "You'll get that flap of skin between your thumb and pointer finger torn out by the gun when you shoot, otherwise."
"Ew." Sam chuckles, her aim going off slightly. She readjusts and aims for the target's head. It takes a while, but she lines it up nicely.
"Wait." Lara stops her with that one word. "Go for the body."
Sam looks puzzled. "What? Why? I thought you were always supposed to go for the head in video games?"
Lara chuckles, but not too hard. The stitches on her stomach feel uncomfortable as it is. "It's better to hit them in the body than go for the head and miss."
"That makes sense." Sam aims again, making sure to breathe in and out calmly. She pulls the trigger. The recoil takes her somewhat by surprise and the noise if far louder than she thought it would be, but she looks forward to the look on Lara's face when she sees her bullseye.
The bullet hole sits by the outer rim of the target, veering off to the left from where she aimed. "Oh, come on." She groans.
"You hit it." Lara puts a hand on her shoulder, a hint of pride on her face. Without warning, she moves behind her and guides her hands with hers.
Sam knows she has never noticed the subtle strength in Lara's hands, but they're all she seems to notice now. They're gentle with her, but she can feel the underlying power under the press of her fingers.
"Relax." Lara's warm breath sends a shiver down Sam's spine as it ghosts over her earlobe.
Sam isn't even paying attention to what Lara is doing anymore. The swell of her breasts is firm against her back, and she feels her hands start to waver.
Holy shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
If the documentaries Lara insists on watching every time she's in front of the television are true, then everything in the Amazon is crawling with the creepiest shit that all want to kill her. She thought it was fine, because she has two mercenaries with her and Lara too. She figured she'd be fine as long as she didn't start licking colorful frogs, but now she's in the water that, according to the documentaries, have monster fish as tall as she is, swarms of piranha, and apparently a type of worm that crawls into your urethra.
Sam feels something scaly and slimy brush across her hand and she suddenly really regrets not punching the name of Lara's new boss into a search engine because she's running—or rather, swimming—away from a bunch of people who'd like to kill her for the second time today, and she's really starting to wonder if the old hag they're working for is just trying to get them all killed.
The water is brown, murky, and just plain wrong. Every time a fish darts around to avoid them, Sam just hopes it's not going to eat her or something equally unpleasant, and every brush again't some floating leaves and fallen branches leaves her wondering if she's going to break out into a rash that will cause her skin to break out into blisters and turn her into a vampire.
Regardless, she continues to swim and swim. It's absolutely not helping that they're swimming against the current, or that she's quickly running out of breath and she can't just go up and inhale, lest a bullet ends up in her head.
Lara's hand is like iron around her wrist, pulling her and urging her to follow and go to safety. Sam feels something scaly and slimy brush against her hand. She sputters as her nose flows with water, trying to get the taste of it and whatever lives in the river out of her mouth. A pounding in her head persists with determination, a feeling she recognizes from all the times she tried too hard to swim to the deep end of the pool when she was little, only to come swimming back after swallowing too much water.
The river isn't rushing with torrents of water, thankfully for them. It's only because of it's relative calmness that they can hear one single male voice that sounds fairly annoyed. He sounds like he's probably yelling, judging by how loud he sounds, even from under water.
Sam is certain that this would mean more swallowing water and less breathing for her, until she sees Nicky's head stick out and stay there. Lara's hair flows strangely gracefully in the water as her cheeks bulge with her air. She's holding her hand, as always has, like she will always do.
Lara emerges from the water and pulls Sam with her. The documentarist takes a long gasp of air as she wipes away the water in which who-knows-what lived in. She doesn't have to do that much, because Lara soon holds her up to the best of her ability with an arm around her, her legs working hard to keep both of them afloat.
"Lara-" she coughs. "I can still swim." She sputters, her own legs colliding with Lara's as she kicks and tries to stay afloat. She briefly looks down. It seems that the fall had pushed Lara's top down a bit, revealing just a hint of cleavage. "I'm not complaining about that."
Those five words render the woman who wiped out the Solarii speechless.
Of course, she found the time for joking because Nicky is completely fine and still on the rocking boat, looking down at them with amusement and pity. "Guess we'll have to stop here."
"Because you didn't tell them we'd be meeting."
Sam tears her eyes to a man standing by the water. His ski mask conceals most of his face but the pale skin around his eyes and the hazel, yet almost unnaturally yellow, shade of his rather unimpressed looking eyes. The entirety of his clothes are colored to fit with the foliage around him.
No wonder she didn't notice him standing there before, especially with the speed that they were going at.
"We were supposed to meet ways from here, that's why." Nicky says, steering the boat to land. It molds nicely into the moist ground. She looks at the two women in the water. "Let me help you up. You don't wanna stay there for too long."
Sam doesn't need any extra encouragement to take her up on her offer, her wet clothes heavy with water as she steps onto the mostly dry land with a squish in her step. She pulls Lara up again, but not before asking what she's been thinking for a very long while. "What the hell is going on?"
"You were attacked by men on motorcycles a while ago." The man begins, motioning at them to follow him as he treks into the forest, over fallen leaves and under low branches. "I received Cameron's call. She left so they would go after her and not you. It's not the first time the asshole's gotten people sent for her head."
Sam gives his back a long, good look as the mosquitoes buzz around her ear. Again, she vows to look up their boss once she has internet. She waves her hand around to make them go. Her backpack seems to get heavier with every step she takes. She briefly ponders if she should empty it of the water before resuming their walk. "Once again, what the hell is going on?"
"I'm just here to make sure you all get to the camp." The man ducks under the branches that nearly poke his eyes out. "And give you explanations, which I'm sure my illustrious friend Cameron did not give you."
"We were in a hurry, jackass." Nicky chuckles, relieved. She seems to be glad that he's here.
"Where are we going?" Lara keeps a keen eye on her surroundings. She stays close to Sam's side, absentmindedly fingering the pistol at her side.
"Camp." The man says. "You'll need to dry off before we join everyone else."
Nicky nods. "You don't want to get trench foot, trust me."
"I came to make sure you had two of us here, just in case." His voice doesn't change as he said the next part. "Cameron suggested that I cluck like a chicken and flap my wings so you wouldn't miss me. You did, and I yelled at you but none of you heard me. So I shot."
Sam snorts. "And did you do the chicken dance?"
"Yes, but not loud enough."
She pauses. Not the answer she was looking for. There, in front of them, is a camp. A rather large tent stands erected by an unlit campfire, surrounded by bushes and trees. The canopy of leaves overhead are thin enough to allow rays of the afternoon sun down to warm Sam's dripping form ever so slightly.
"I set up camp. Go change inside." The man says, turning himself around.
"Thanks... Um..." Lara continues to look at his covered face.
"Thanks." Sam just says. Unlike Lara, she never bothered to remember her professors' names corrects, and so she opted to just not call them by name instead.
"Call me Fields."
"Okay." Sam hangs around a little bit to ask him a question she's been wanting to know for a while. "Why don't you take off your mask?"
"I've been wearing this for over an hour." Fields says. When the two women don't catch his meaning, he crosses his arms and looks at them like he can't believe they don't know what he's talking about. "My hair is already matted. I will wash it before I let anyone see it."
Lara finds it ironic that she's the one dripping wet and doesn't care a lick about who's looking. "Oh. Okay, then." She says, although she can't help exchanging a look with Sam- a habit that's starting to become all the more frequent.
They don't listen to the idle chatter from outside the tent as the duo's backpacks drop to the ground in undignified thumps. Sam immediately begins stripping herself of her jacket, throwing it to a pile by her bag. The shirt that hangs to her frame is tossed mindlessly on the jacket, revealing her usual burgundy sports bra.
Lara chuckles. Cameron had told them to bring their most comfortable clothes before they left London. Of course, even Sam's most comfortable bras showed a generous amount of cleavage. She usually used them to lounge around the house without a shirt, a habit that explained why Lara frequently had to remind herself to keep an eye on her cooking before she got too distracted and burned them into a crisp and set off the fire alarm again.
"Are you done looking?" Sam playfully asks, snapping Lara out of her unintended daydream.
Somehow, Lara knows that's not all the slightly shorter woman means. "Y-Yeah." She stammers, before quickly removing her own clothing.
With a knowing smirk, Sam peels her off her pants, completely aware of the wide-eyed stare aimed at her. She gingerly bends down to open her bag, smiling to herself when she doesn't hear the sound of Lara's clothes dropping anywhere anymore.
She's got her attention.
Sam has no words for how thankful she is that Cameron had the foresight to tell them to stuff their important objects inside their respective diving bags inside their backpacks. She had thought that it was silly to put a bag inside a bag.
The sound of shuffling behind her catches Sam's attention. She turns around after she puts her dry clothes safely on the ground, wiping her face with a small pink towel with kitty prints.
Lara's back is turned to her and the archaeologist is stiffly dropping her pants.
Oh, Lara. Sam takes a moment to admire the toned back before her, slick with moisture, when she hatches an idea. "Lara, open my clasp."
The brunette turns around, her mouth gaping like a fish. "What?"
Sam holds in her laughter. "Unclasp my bra, okay?"
Lara rigidly nods as Sam gingerly turns around. She's reminded of that time when they were on vacation in the Bahamas. Sam had insisted on paying for the tickets and the hotels and all she asked of Lara was to lather some sunblock on her back. She didn't expect the Japanese to untie her bikini top, leading to the poor Englishwoman squirted it all over the sofa. She had to mutter a very sincere apology to the cleaning staff afterwards.
Awkward. Hot. Embarrassing.
"Lara?" Sam's call brings her back to the situation at hand for the second time today.
"O-Of course."
Sam feels her bra get loose and she shimmies out of it. The article of clothing drops to the floor and she gets ready to give Lara a very nice surprise, only to find said woman shutting her eyes tighter than Sam's jeans. Her face looks constipated. The only clue that she's actually enjoying it is the flush in her cheeks that has spread to the tips of her ears.
"Holy shit." Sam laughs, flinging her panties behind her somewhere. She dries herself some more with the towel, reveling in the quivering bottom lip of one Lara Croft. "You've been looking before, so why not look now?"
That's an offer. "I-I... Uh, I just..."
Sam's snickers grow increasingly louder with every stammer coming from the Croft before she decides to mercifully stop her teasing for now. Pulling on her dry pair of panties, she barely restrains from whistling loudly at the sight of Lara taking off hers.
"You're too easy to tease, Lara." Sam giggles mischievously.
Lara breathes in relief when she finds her mostly clothed and definitely not naked anymore. "You're absolutely aggravating." She laughs, although there's no hiding the shadow of a blush on her cheeks.
Sam gives her an over the top and cheesy wink. "You know you like it."
Once Lara pulls her top on, she makes sure not to stammer uselessly at the question again, instead choosing to reply with just a chuckle. "Come on. I'm dying to figure out what's going on."
"You're not the only one." Sam says, heading to the tent flap. As she heads outside, she gives Lara's backside a little slap.
The small gasp she draws from the Londoner's lips brings a smile to her face.
*scurries to research about archaeology*
Also, guys, I've been really busy since I'm moving to Vancouver tomorrow, so I admit that I wasn't very careful with spelling and grammar checking here. Please tell me if I missed anything. Thanks.