Summary: In which the gang travels through New Mexico on the way to Hollywood.
Warning: recreational cannabis use
Lin and Bolin were mighty quiet, staring out the window and heavy sighing from time to time as Kya drove westward.
"Hey guys, why the long faces? We're on an adventure, and you, Kid, are going to Hollywood. It's exciting!" Kya said it as if she had to convince them.
Bolin sighed again. Pabu was snoozles under a blanket.
Kya continued: "Is it about Opal?"
Bolin and Lin nodded and Kya gave Lin a look. "OK, Bolin makes sense, but why are you nodding?"
Lin crossed her arms and shrugged. "Because... she's... sorta my long-lost niece. Surprise."
Bolin and Kya's jaws dropped. Lin shrugged again in an attempt to be cool but her whole body stiffened.
"Why didn't you say anything, sweetie? We coulda stayed longer in Austin."
"No!" Lin snapped. Her aversion to Austin was beyond rational by this point. "I mean, sorry. We had our little moment, and now the moment's passed."
"Wowwwww... Aunt Lin. Auntie Lin." Bolin's eyes glazed over with warmth and possibility. "I'm telling you, us meeting Opal was serendipitous. I think we're all connected – our souls, you know?"
"What? Sounds like a bunch of malarkey to me," Lin said.
"No, no, I think the kid has a point. I felt something the day we met. Like we have always and will always know each other – in other lifetimes or universes or whatever the cosmos cooked up. And with Bolin and Opal, and even your ex, Governor Tenzin, there's this sense of familiarity. I don't know how to explain it. Sort of like our souls like to travel together in whatever world we find ourselves in." Kya added her own hippie juju to the mix.
"Sounds like a cockamamie theory, but..." Lin thought of the first time she saw Kya. It was in theater number eight. And though she feigned annoyance with the woman for disrupting her favorite movie, she distinctly remembered the strange familiarity and tingle in her chest and bones when the theater lights came back on and she put on her coat and walked out, stealing glances of the beautiful brown stoner woman all the while. And the pleasant surprise of seeing her again at the coffee shop. And the night of lovemaking that followed. The feeling still lingered; she never wanted it to leave.
"But?" Kya reminded Lin her thoughts had trailed.
"But, I don't know. Just a lot of coincidences happening lately, OK?"
Kya chuckled and squeezed Lin's thigh, sending Lin spiraling with arousal. She looked at the hand on her thigh and then to the person that moved it. Her cheeks became flush and her head light, her chest full of flurries.
Bolin smiled and slowly leaned in the middle of the front seats. "Awww, you ladies are having a moment."
Lin recoiled. "Yeah, well the moment's ruined now."
"Gosh, I love you two!" He pulled them in for an awkward hug, Kya still cruising west on the interstate to the next one.
Miles turned to state borders, and then they were cruising the high altitude New Mexico desert, sage brushes and salt flats at the base of brown mountains. It was the waistband wasteland of the world, the horse's latitude. And one of the most beautiful places Lin had ever seen.
They passed through Roswell earlier that day. The tour through the museum and "Area 51" – where visitors could take pictures with alien dolls doing all manner of domestic things: barbecuing, bartending, sitting on the toilet with newspaper – took all of two hours. Otherwise it was a lonesome place.
Later, when it was time to settle, they chose the middle of nowhere on the side of an old ghost town. Hardly a blue New Mexican license plate passed by, and the sky was littered with stars.
Kya pulled into a lonely gas station and fueled up on gas and provisions for the night, mostly cups of noodles for their hotplate and other convenience-friendly but definitely not healthy foods.
Bolin snuck off to a telephone booth where he made two calls: first to his brother, then to Opal, telling her he missed her and how he had hoped to see aliens in Roswell but the dolls were fun too.
Lin noticed Bolin at the phone booth chatting it up, making that stupid doe-eyed face of his and figured he must be talking to Opal. She ambled over to the booth and waved at Bolin. She paced around a short while before finally cramming into the booth with him and pulling his hand with the receiver up to her ear.
"Hello? Opal? This is your Aunt Lin. I hope you're safe out there. Maybe you could visit sometime. I –"
Bolin pulled the receiver back. "As a matter of fact, he said to Lin, though speaking toward the phone, Opal is coming to see me in Hollywood."
Lin's eyes lit up but she collected herself. "That's good," she attempted to say dispassionately before yanking the receiver one more time from Bolin: "Be sure to get an oil change if you're driving. OK, miss you, bye."
Embarrassed of her display, she replaced the phone and headed to the van without looking back.
When Bolin climbed in the car minutes later, Kyalin were waiting for them, drinking coconut waters and munching on beef jerky.
"Here ya go." Kya handed Bolin snacks.
"Thank you." He grinned in Lin's direction.
Lin slurped her drink, pretending not to notice.
"Looky here," Kya said, holding up a joint.
"Ooh, a doobie!" Bolin's eyes lit up, much like the joint was about to be.
"My last doobie, that is, until we get to California. Shall we?"
"Is that even a question?"
Kya and Bolin were tailgating the van, their legs dangling off the back, doors swung wide. Lin was writing in her pocket journal. She started keeping one sometime during her detective days when she took little notes about cases as revelations came to her. She found herself writing personal notes too, and so had two notebooks, one in each pocket. Now she only kept one.
She sniffed and the scent of pot wafted up her nose, sweet but skunky.
"Did you know it's illegal to smoke here?"
"Yeah, super illegal," Kya laughed.
"Ultra illegal." Bolin did a long, sheep-like baahing of a laugh.
Lin rolled her eyes and turned around to face the back of the van. "That's it. Give it here." She reached out her hand.
"Come over here hunney," Kya cooed and then coughed from ripping a big hit.
"Fine." Lin walked around to the butt of the van and held the joint at the very tip of her finger and thumb, pinky up.
"It ain't tea time, baby. Well, in a way it is," Kya winked.
Lin took a long puff and coughed before she could finish inhaling, the smoke tickling her lungs and shooting back out into the New Mexico air.
"Ooh, that's how you know you got a good hit," Bolin said.
Lin passed it to him. "How do I know if I feel anything? What does stoned feel like anyway? Does it make you all loopy? Talkative? Paranoid? Ooh, I have an idea, how about we put on a good record and listen to the whole thing from beginning to end?"
In that moment, Kya realized she loved Lin and could spend the rest of her days with that woman. It was only fitting they were headed west to California, where the ocean met the desert, where water met earth.
A/N: Thanks for tuning in, folks. This is more or less the end of part 1. Part 2 will be Kyalin and Bolin in Hollywood, where we meet Mako. We also get to see our (my) favorite ladies, Korra and Asami. Hehe, I have it all figured out and can't wait to write it. At any rate, Bolin gets an agent, but it's not Varrick. ;-)