There will be no Kutie - er, Kurtis Stealing! ;-)
This chapter is for Pterofrog, whose idea it was. She can be very useful, on occasion. :-)
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The next morning, I entered the kitchen to find Hillary already sat down to breakfast.
"Morning, Hillary," I said, tugging my fingers through my tangled hair to pull it off my face.
"Good morning, Lara." Hillary didn't bother getting up – long ago I'd managed to drill it into him that when I got up I made my own toast and coffee. He munched on a spoon of cereal, reading his morning paper.
"Are the others not up yet?"
"Is Bryce ever?" was the answer from behind The Financial Times.
I smiled at that, and turned on the toaster, pouring myself coffee from the already brewed cafetiere.
"Kurtis doesn't usually sleep in, though."
On cue, my fellow tomb raider dragged himself into the kitchen, bleary eyed, groaning and still wearing yesterday's clothes, though a site more creased, with his hair attractively mussed.
"Toast?" I offered him, brightly.
He came to a halt at my words, stared at me blankly for a second, and then lunged for the coffee pot. Leaning heavily against the worktop, he poured himself a very large coffee and then took a swig, scrunching up his eyes in apparent discomfort. Pouring a second, he turned around and thrust it towards Bryce, who was just staggering in with his fingers massaging his temples.
"Champion," my friend croaked, grabbing the coffee and staggering back out, followed by Kurtis, who was periodically taking more sips of coffee, each as bad as the last if the expression on his face was anything to go by.
"'You two getting on alright, then?" I asked innocently. Kurtis stopped, carefully turned, and glared. I sniggered. He began to leave again, but I stopped him. "About moving in – take as much time as you want to decide. I realise you might not be comfortable deciding now. We don't really know each other that well, do we?" I trailed off, curious as to Kurtis' expression, eyes narrowed and gaze set sideways, mouth slightly open as if he was remembering something that didn't quite fit with my sentence.

Stepping out of Lara's room, closing the door quietly behind him, Kurtis nodded his head in greeting as Bryce passed on his way to bed. Before he knew what he was doing, Kurtis was stepping forward after Bryce and raising a subconscious hand to stop the retreating form.
"Hey Bryce! Hold up!" Bryce stopped and turned, raising a questioning eyebrow. "You...wanna drink?"
"Er...I've just spent five hours doing virus scans – why not?" Bryce grinned and turned back towards Kurtis' room, Kurtis already moving to open the door.
Flopping into a chair at the small table in the corner of the room, Bryce watched his host rummage in his wardrobe and bring out a large bottle of whisky and two glasses.
"So," said Kurtis, getting straight to the point and pouring Bryce and himself a whisky, "tell me all about Lara."
"Still deciding whether or not to take her up on the offer, eh?" Bryce downed the whisky and grimaced, letting out a breath as the burning in his throat took hold.
"Something like that," Kurtis agreed, pouring them both another drink.
"Well, she's clever, and brave and athletic, as you know. What you may not know is that she can play the piano." Another glass downed.
"She can play the piano?"
"Heart and Soul."
"Now – now you're joking with me." Another glass poured, and Kurtis waggled a finger at Bryce accusingly.
"Well, what do you want to know?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking." Kurtis served Bryce another drink, a little larger than the one he poured for himself.
"Well," said Bryce, considering, the effects of the alcohol starting to kick in, though nowhere near as fast as Kurtis would have liked, "She's a good person, loyal and true and all that."
"Yeah, I got all that. What about – what's she like? What makes her tick? You know her pretty well, right?" The alcohol slowed down a little, Kurtis not wanting Bryce to realise that he was working him.
"Yeah, I s'pose. She's a bit neurotic..." Bryce trailed off, and Kurtis, realising that Bryce was obviously well mannered enough to be guarded with regards to talking about Lara, poured him another drink, masking the action with another question and hoping his drinking mate wouldn't notice he didn't pour himself another.
"Neurotic how?"
Bryce giggled. Yep, the whisky was definitely starting to have an effect.
"Go in her room and move her stuff around when she's not there." He downed the waiting shot, a sharp intake of breath following, though apparently more connected with his perception of Lara's territorial behaviour over her belongings. "She'll go nuts. Nuts."
Kurtis giggled.
"You're not having another?" Bryce quizzed, tilting his glass towards Kurtis' empty.
"Oh, er, yeah." Kurtis refilled his glass, pretending to have forgotten, and then downed it immediately, feigning enthusiasm.
"And don't tease her about how much time she spends on her hair." Bryce stared off into space as he said this, seeming to draw that piece of advice from mused experience. His eyes were slightly unfocused.
"That is a pretty perfect braid," Kurtis agreed, nodding a little more than was probably necessary.
"All down to hairspray. Eight bottles of it, all lined up in her bathroom." Bryce mimed the action exaggeratedly and Kurtis sniggered.
"Don't even get me started on the amount of conditioner she gets through."
"No?" Two shots each were swallowed in quick succession, Kurtis confident that he could get Bryce talking before he himself lost his lucidity, unaware that it was already slipping.
"She has this apple conditioner, and it's bright green – looks like toxic waste." Bryce fixed his gaze even more strongly on a seemingly arbitrary point of the wall.
"Maybe," said Kurtis, blinking to clear his vision, "it is."
Bryce redirected his slightly glassy stare back to Kurtis. "Could account for her boundless energy."
The two men stared at each other for a second and then erupted into laughter.
Ninety minutes later, it was clear that Kurtis had underestimated Bryce's tolerance for spirits in comparison to his own. Both men were sprawled over the table, giggling like children, delving into the most trivial and pointless anecdotes of Bryce and Lara's time together, finding all of it far too funny.
"And once, she – she," Bryce downed another and Kurtis, shaking as his body convulsed in unstoppable laughter, tried desperately to get some more alcohol into the glass, which was, in his opinion, far too small a target. "She made a toasted sandwich, and couldn't work out why, why it wasn't cooking, and the socket – the socket was turned off!"
The punch line was too much for Trent, who burst into a fresh wave of laughter and banged his hand on the table, eyes screwed shut against the painful sniggers that wouldn't stop coming.
"And the – and the," Kurtis panted, before swallowing in an effort to compose himself, "the Strahov! You should'a, should'a seen, the, the, the, look on her face when I locked her in the, the er," his face took on a confused look as he searched for the word to match the concept in his fogged brain, "airlock! The airlock!"
Bryce clutched his stomach as he fell into new depths of hilarity at the conjured image, and Kurtis, giving up on trying to fight the glass and win, took another swig straight from the bottle.
"You locked her in an airlock?" Bryce managed to squeak through his tears of laughter. Kurtis nodded erratically, offering the bottle to Bryce. He took it, and, yelling, "Good man!" slapped Kurtis on the shoulder with his free hand.
"Whoa!" Kurtis toppled off his chair sideways.

"No," Trent said thoughtfully.