Does the raspberry pi have a wifi adapter, and is it unused for your project?
If so, you can use your pi as an access point --- no need for cables, you just connect your laptop to the pi's SSID.
Downside is that now your laptop doesn't have Internet access, which may be a deal breaker (unless you can plug your pi into a router and get access through it). You could just get a cheap USB wifi dongle for your laptop and use one interface for Internet, one for pi.