Bonus - We Mow Lawns - Magic of the Lost AU

[Edit May 28, 2025: Because of everything else that's...coming...I've decided to make this free for now. Enjoy. 😏]

Guess who's back with another AU! This one of a decidedly different and very NSFW nature!

Back in January when I was in Australia, I was driving around--being driven, actually--and we passed a black sign hung on someone's fence that said in white paint, "WE MOW LAWNS" with a phone number on it. Dunno about you, but like any good lesbian, I don't mow grass lawns because I believe in protecting the pollinators. (And because I don't have a lawn, but that's not the point.)

Point is, I thought that phrase belonged on a shirt and that shirt belonged to a couple of dykes with a lawn care business, and what better women than Touraine and Pruett? Whose lawn were they mowing? Well...let's just say the story wrote itself. Except for a few particular bits. I've just recently dusted the story off and finished those particular bits, so here it is, finally finished for you, almost 5,000 words of goodness.

As before, this is a mostly unedited bit of fun. However, I would appreciate your support if you're excited about the story. Your dollar (well, pound sterling) will go to my kettlebell fund, which will in turn lead to more muscles, which leads to more thirst traps, also for you. And if you really really enjoyed it, tell your friends--about the books and about the story. And about the thirst traps.

We Mow Lawns

Touraine didn’t make the best impression the first day on the job at the big Ancier house. Don’t get her wrong; that huge yard was immaculate. All that sterile grass clipped short, the weeds whacked, and the hedges shaped into things that definitely looked like…animals.

It was the owner’s fault. Usually was, with jobs like this. Lawns like this belonged to one type of person and one type only: rich men who got off on the power trip of making someone else do the work. In other words, assholes.

But assholes had money and money was what Touraine and Pruett needed. It was as good a job as any to make ends meet while they waited to hear back from this postdoc or that job application. Pruett was still thinking about quitting it all to run a petting zoo in the middle of nowhere. Until they figured it out, though, this was it. It was like those frat bro moving companies called “Two Meathead Men Move Furniture”—what was more natural than a couple of dykes mowing lawns?

It wasn’t even so bad, usually. The rich assholes stayed out of the way, if they were even home—Touraine was pretty sure half the yards they mowed were second or third houses, temporarily abandoned.

Still, abandoned or not, they always ran up to the door to give a courtesy knock to let the owners know they were finished. It was the best way to get tips—in cash. Most of them paid ahead of time on running accounts. Especially if, on the odd occasion, it was some old widow who called them “handsome boys” and got a kick out of a little sauciness.

So after they finished the Ancier job, they loaded the mowers and the tools into the truck and trudged up the long walk.

“How many more of these until we can afford a driving mower?” Touraine asked, mopping the back of her neck with a steaming, sweaty rag that had once been frozen solid with ice water.

“Whole point is to earn money, not blow it all away on a tool to work even more, dickhead.”

“We are literally too fucking old for this, Pruett. We’re not sixteen anymore.” To prove her point, she stretched and her back cracked from her hips all the way up her spine. “Jesus Christ on a bi—”

“Shut up.” Pruett snapped her knuckles sharply on the door, ignoring the brass doorknocker on the dark wood.

Touraine started the obligatory count under her breath. “Three, two, one—” She was already turning on her heel when the door opened. She reversed the motion immediately and plastered on a false grin.

“Hi!” she said cheerily. “We mowed your lawn!”

Pruett chimed in on cue. “And if you like the work we do, tell your friends!”

“And we’ll mow their lawn, too!”

Look, as far as gimmicks go, Touraine knew it wasn’t the greatest. At least Pruett had made it rhyme a bit. Touraine’s idea had gotten them to the innuendo and the t-shirts (hers of which she was now wearing, with the sleeves cut off and gaping holes at the arms that showed everything from her armpits to her waist).

And it wasn’t some rich asshole of a middle-aged man with an insecurity problem or an old woman enjoying the spice of her imagination. It wasn’t even the housemaid or butler or whoever those types of people kept around.

No, the person in the doorway was definitely the owner. Or the owner’s kid. She was young, maybe thirty, with blue-green eyes. Her blond hair was pulled tight in a ponytail and there was a cant to her eyebrows and a pucker to her mouth that made her look condescending or suspicious. Or maybe she just was condescending. And suspicious. She wore tight jeans and a white tee-shirt that showed a long expanse of collarbone and sternum.

Pretty, if you liked that kinda thing. Severe. Who looked like they wanted to step on you, chew you up, and spit out the bones.

Touraine definitely wasn’t into that.

A slight crinkle appeared between the woman’s eyebrows. “Oh. You must be…the lawn…mowers. Funny. I thought you’d be younger.” She spoke with the hint of an accent, something scrubbed almost clean leaving nothing behind but the sound of cultured superiority.

Touraine tried to shoot Pruett a glare—see?—but Pruett was fixing the woman with her politely-concealed-distaste face. Which wasn’t very well concealed at all.

“Ah. Right, of course.” The woman stepped back into the spacious foyer. She walked with a cane and a slight limp and the certainty that the world would wait for her, no matter how long she took.

She came back with two crisp fifty-dollar bills and held them out.

Pruett frowned down at the cash. “No, ma’am, your accounts all paid up.”

The woman raised a dark eyebrow. It was darker than the rest of her golden hair. “I know it is. A tip, isn’t it?” She shook the crisp bills like they were just a couple tenners.

Touraine took the money and smiled as graciously as she could while Pruett kept scowling. “Thanks so much…” She trailed off and waited for the woman to fill in her name.

“Luca,” Luca said. She eyed Touraine skeptically. “I’m the owner.”

“Of course you are,” Pruett muttered under her breath.

Touraine elbowed Pruett in the ribs. “It was lovely to meet you, Luca. I’m Touraine and this is my friend Pruett. We’ll be back same time next week if that’s alright with you.”

“Yes, sure.” Luca waved her hand carelessly but Touraine noticed the quick up-down Luca gave her. “This is a weekly thing, then?”

“Depending on the weather,” Pruett grumbled.

“Alright. Thank you very much.”

Touraine dragged Pruett by the arm down the brick stairs. “Tell me you were not about to turn down a hundred dollars.”

“Fifty dollars. Give me mine.”

“No! You wouldn’t even take it from her. How’s she any different from Ethel?”

“You clearly think she’s different from Ethel. I’m surprised you didn’t offer to mow her lawn right on her fucking doorstep.”

“So what if I did? She’s…hot.” Touraine closed her eyes to better recall. “That easy elegance, the cruel confidence, the handsome hauteur. Mmm.”

Pruett made a disgusted sound in her throat. “You always go for assholes.”

They were at the truck now. Touraine stared pointedly across the bed at Pruett. “Yeah. Look how well that turned out.”

Pruett rolled her eyes to the sky. “Whatever. But don’t fuck this up. The Ancier account is one of the few consistent gigs we have.”

“I’m not gonna fuck this up.”

“I’ve heard that one before.”

#

Over the next month, Touraine found herself conveniently forgetting her water bottle or drinking it all and needing refill (once, this backfired and she ended up having to piss like a race horse, but she refused to ask to use Luca’s toilet; somehow it felt like going too far). Pruett also stopped coming up to get the tip. “If I watch you moon over her again, I will literally throw up on the marble and then we’ll have to give her the tip back just to get it cleaned.”

That was how Touraine found herself standing sweaty in Luca Ancier’s marble foyer across from an awkwardly large round mirror, holding an empty glass with a couple of folded fifties in the waistband of her denim cut-offs. (They were part of the unofficial uniform.)

“I’m in med school,” Touraine said, spinning the cup idly in her hands. “Pruett’s in vet med.”

Luca tapped one of her short nails against her glass and took another drink. “None of the med students I know would be caught dead mowing lawns.”

Touraine bristled. “Well, we can’t all live on loans alone.”

“That’s—I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. It was a compliment. I hate the other med students I know.”

It was stupid how quickly Touraine could go from irritation to a butterfly flutter in her stomach.

“So you don’t hate me?”

“I don’t know you.”

Touraine realized that they’d been unconsciously closing the space between them. Luca was right, though. They didn’t know each other. They’d only had these brief exchanges over water and cash, always with Pruett waiting outside. Touraine wanted to know her, though. And judging by the careful way Luca was studying her, that’s what she wanted, too.