Trips took a sip. “That is not water.”
Ami put a hand under his neck to lift his head. “Please.”
“Okay. More,” he said, his eyes still behind the veil of a towel. She held the cup to his chapped lips. He swirled his finger around in a circle. “Looks like Timid O’Dation and DM were here. They do very nice steampunk design, and evidently, plumbing,” Trips said, chuckling. His laugh turned into a wheezing hollow cough.
Ami noticed blood in his mouth and felt a sharp pain in her chest. Don’t break down.
She pointed at the bank of lights over the mirror. “They screwed up the lights.”
“No, I did that, love, unscrewed the light bulbs.” He took a sip of sugary salt solution. “I got whacked – my eye is kind of messed up.” He wiggled his fingers over the right side of his face, then lifted the towel so Ami could see his battered eye. She broke down sobbing, spilling the rest of the cup on his chest. “I'm okay. It's okay, I'll be fine,” he said, leaning over the tub, trying to comfort her.
“No, you're not,” Ami said, crushing the plastic cup in her fist.
“It's just a little blurry. C'mon, Ami, help me get this effing thing off. I can't do it by myself right now.” Trips groaned and hoisted himself onto the rim of the tub. “What the hell is that stuff?”
Ami held her breath for a moment to calm down, unzipping the back of his suit. “It’s WHO water. Like those sports drinks, kind of, only ickier.”
“I don’t have diarrhea, but that shit is likely to give it to me.”
“Okay. Just drink it.” Trips drank more of the concoction as they unpeeled the armor from his battered body and tossed the pieces into the tub. Finally, Ami asked. “What did they do to you?”
Trips scoffed. “Like, nine weeks of basic training in a day. Bunch of tests and crap.” He sighed. “See?” He turned to her and smiled, standing up and closing the shower curtain. “Better already. Don't forget to wash up. I'm completely covered in zombie guts. Got any beer?”
“Yep, Dewey’s stout.” Ami washed up in the bathroom sink using soap and part of the pitcher of clear water, then went to grab a mug of soup in the kitchen. She came back and handed Trips the mug of soup through the shower curtain. “I'll get some ice for your eye.”
She glanced at Trips standing under the stream of hot water as he sniffed the mug of translucent glop. “Ugh, smells rank.”
“Rice soup with protein flakes. Eat it,” Ami called from the kitchen.
“Gag me!” Trips called and set the cup of glop on the bathroom counter.
“Eat it, and drink that pitcher of water, too.”
Ami was grateful everything was neat and tidy, but her apartment didn’t feel like home. She got an instant ice pack for Trips’ face, and cracked a couple of homebrews.
When she got back to the bathroom, Trips was wrapped in towels, drinking rehydration fluid and pushing his armor around in the a few inches of murky tub water with his feet. When he saw Ami, he set the plastic cup down on the counter and reached for the bottle of beer, “Ah, now that'll fix me up right as rain.”
They clinked bottles and drank for a long moment. Trips sighed and put the bottle on the counter, then hung his Kevlar suit over the shower bar to drip dry.
“You didn't eat your soup,” Ami said, raising an eyebrow at the untouched mug.
“Yeah, and I ain't going to ‘cause I'm not a guppy,” he said, tossing off his towels.
“So how did you get it to go Mr. Wizard?” Ami asked, looking at the formidable brass, zinc and copper piping that dropped down two feet from the ceiling in a complicated twist of a circulatory system.
Trips pointed at the large gray square in the corner of the ceiling. “It's tankless. See?”
“So, it's a tankless job?”
Trips chuckled, winced, and then opened the cabinet while holding the ice pack over his bad eye. “Starts under the sink, with five gallons per minute pressure control and compensating flow reducer and aerator, then goes to the carboy for the water in the corner through the copper tubing, and then up way over here, at the other end, and my filter's up there, and voilà, a high efficiency hot water heater that can recirculate and filter the water with a minimum of loss. Shall we try out the tub?”
“But how do you turn it on?”
Trips took the icepack away from his eye and squinted. “Seriously?”
Ami shrugged, looking up at the ceiling.
Trips toggled a shiny new flat thumb lever below the faucets and twisted the brass handles like normal. He guzzled the rest of his beer and held out the bottle to Ami. “And for that, you get to get me another beer.”
Ami took the bottle and raised an eyebrow. “I guess you’re fine.”
He groaned, lolling his head back over the rim of the tub as it filled with hot water. “Got anything other than Soylent Green?”
Ami turned to look at him in the doorway. “I'll find something.” She smiled. “I'm glad you're home.”
“Me too, baby, me too,” he said, kicking a shoulder pad over the rim of the tub.
Ami fished the key from her front pocket and grabbed a flashlight from the table then she unlocked the bedroom. She flicked the flashlight over the room and switched on the solar lights for the bedroom area.
She hated climbing up the rickety metal ladder that led to the maze of boxes that were her belongings. The dry erase board showed a map, along with an inventory printout. God, Ichiro, talk about OCD, and going through my things. Who the hell do you think you are, you jerk. It still pissed her off.
She found Trips’ boxes on Ichiro’s map and pulled out dried foodstuffs and a bottle of Scotch, then squatted to set them on the edge of the loft then clattered down the stupid metal ladder.
Taking everything to the kitchen, she fetched two more beers and went back to the bathroom. Bits of armor and clothing were dripping all over the floor as Trips lounged in the tub with the ice pack over his eyes. “What took you so damn long? C'mon, now, slide on in here, and hand me that board. I’m starvin’,” he drawled.
Ami handed him the broken floorboard they used as a tray for the bath, and Trips cooed as she placed things on the tray and undressed.
She slid into the steamy water behind him. He sighed leaning back on her and took a swig of scotch then let the bottle slip partway underwater.
“It's going to get hot.”
“Aye, it’s going to get very hot.” He twitched the right side of his mouth up and kissed her neck.
Ami laughed and took the bottle from him and set it back on the board. “So, what happened?”
Trips nuzzled her. “Mm, later.” They ate cheese and dried sausage with fig jam on crackers and drank beer and sipped whiskey. When the water got chilly Ami nudged Trips who was nearly asleep leaning against her. He waved vaguely. “Mm. I'll just sleep here.”
Ami pushed him forward and got out of the tub then pulled the plug. She wrapped herself in a towel and took the board with the remains of their feast to the kitchen and put them in the fridge and peeked out the window at the solar panel.
It was magic that the refrigerator could run on the single solar cell and that Ichiro had the foresight to install it outside her window. Maybe Trips asked him. She didn’t want to give Ichiro the praise, still angry at his intrusion.
In the bathroom, she found Trips watching the recirculation of the bath water. He smiled. “Very cool design, that.”
She wrapped her hair in a towel and opened the medicine cabinet. “You want a pain killer? I've got yellow jackets or baby blues.”
Trips cracked a smile. “You're just a little pusher, aren't you?” He shook his head, leaning on the counter as he studied his battered face and teeth in the mirror. “I'm disgustingly tired, I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping.”
“You going to tell me what happened or what?” Ami asked, turning to him.
“Whoa.” Trips lost his footing and grabbed the bathroom counter. He faltered again, and Ami caught him, spreading her palms w
ide on his chest. He slumped an arm over her shoulder. “I think I need to go to bed. Drank too many, thank you.”
“I can't hold you up. C'mon, Trips! Sit down,” Ami glanced at the rim of the tub, as she sank under his weight. He leaned on the sink, took a deep breath, then straightened up and strode toward the bedroom.
Ami ran after him when she heard a thud. “You okay?”
He had landed in the bed. He unfurled his towel from around his waist and dumped it over his eyes. “Mm. Sleeping.”
Ami tucked a quilt around him, then thought better of it. Skin-on-skin contact worked for other injuries. She crawled into bed and lay on Trips, cradling his injured eye.
Chapter 15: Red Rocket Recruitment Ad
The smell of toothpaste and cold toes digging into the back of her knees awoke Ami. She smiled rolling over to find Trips smiling at her. Dust floated in the streaks of sunshine penetrating their warehouse cubby. She stretched her arms up around his neck, blinking. “G’morning.”
“I’ll say,” Trips winked his bad eye shut. “Want some coffee?”
“Mm, so good.” Ami lay on her side. “Yes, and how’re you feeling?”
Trips considered her question and rose to his feet wearing Ami’s largest sweatpants. “Um, let’s see.” He rolled his shoulders. “Tired, achy, over-fucking-whelmed, but okay,” He smiled goofily, “‘cause I’m with you.”
“Aw.” Ami sat up and propped her arms beneath her. “So, you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what? I need coffee. Black okay?”
Ami put on her kimono and followed Trips into the living room. “You know, yesterday, the Colonel, how you told him ‘no.’”
“Oh, yeah,” Trips said as he set about making coffee in the kitchen. “You mean, Army training, sir,” he said, in a high-pitched twang, imitating Bill Murray in Stripes.
Ami wagged a finger as she headed into the bathroom. “Yeah, but I thought we agreed that you were just going to talk to him.”
Trips raised an eyebrow and then hissed in pain. “Guess I can’t do that.”
When Ami joined him in the kitchen, she ran her fingers gently over his brow examining the damage. She sighed. “You were supposed to say ‘no.’”
“Kickback from an M-4 Carbine. Could have been worse.” He placed Ami's hand over his bad eye. “Over fifteen hundred joules of kinetic energy in my face, boom. Doc said it’s a sub-conjunctive hematoma and cornea abrasion.” Ami moved her hand away. Trips winked his eye open. “Still a bit blurry. Just aches is all and looks like hell. It’ll be fine. Just thunderbolts and lightning.”
She shook her head. “Very, very frightening.”
“Funny, you are.” Trips smiled putting Ami’s hand over his eye again. “This is nice, though. Makes it all better.”
“What else happened? Why didn't you call?”
Trips groaned and poured coffee from the filling pot into a mug. It looked like syrup to Ami. He shook his head heading across the living room sipping his hot syrup and flopped back into bed. “They took my stuff! Made me do pushups, and calculus — without coffee, mind you. Then, at the end of the day, when I was good and spent, they stuck me in a live combat run alone.” Trips paused and sat up as Ami sat down next to him. “With zombies.” He shuddered. “Horrible!” He nuzzled Ami. “This is better. Soft.”
“Let's move to Canada.” Ami pulled Trips close. “Poor, baby. We'll take Miss Kitty and never come back.”
“Phh. Leave Kitty behind.”
Ami rolled her eyes. “You’re awful.”
“He'd be fine.” They were silent for a moment. Trips sat back and pulled Ami into him. He stroked her hair. “There's a recruitment party today at HQ. Come with me. Starts at the end of first shift.”
Ami sat up and searched his eyes. “I thought you were going to say 'no.'”
He smiled and poked her belly. “They've got real food,” he stated in a sing-song.
Ami shook her head and got up.
“I said, food. Real food, like, with taste.” Trips watched her tighten the belt on her robe. “Thought that would get you.” He leaned back into the pillows and picked up his mug from the side table.
“Well think again.” Ami punched the button on the alarm clock hard. “You want breakfast?”
“Mm, whatcha got?” Trips wiggled his toes and smiled broadly.
Ami shook her head. Go ahead; ignore my sarcasm. She rolled her eyes. “Pancakes?”
“Ta—totally,” Trips stretched, showing ribs bones.
“’Sides, we've got to fatten you up,” Ami said, tickling him.
He wrestled her away from his tender ribs. “What for? The kill?”
“Apparently!”
“Hey, c’mon.” He stood up as she crossed the bedroom toward the living room. She turned to see him don sunglasses as he picked up his phone. “Let me make a quick call, and then I'll explain everything at brekkers.”
“You better,” Ami called, entering the kitchen.
Trips dialed Ichiro. “Hey, Ich, kind of diggin' Fort Alpert. Yeah, Ami’s bedroom. It’s cool. So, what's Timid's number? I should call and thank him and DM for the steampunk plumbing.”
“Tell Ichiro they're a really cute couple,” Ami called out as she heated up the frying pan.
“Couple of what?” Trips called out as he slipped into a pair of jeans he’d left there. “No, wait. Ami said to tell you that Timid and DM are a nice couple, and I said couple of what.”
Ami watched from the kitchen as Trips’ mouth fell open.
“You're sure? Tim O’Dation and DM?” He glanced at her, and then looked away, listening. “Wait.” He crossed the room and dropped his sunglasses on the kitchen table and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ow. Are you trying to convey to me that that was a gay gaming circle? Is that why...? Dammit, Ichiro—” Trips stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Ami listened at the bathroom door, with the spatula in her hand. Oh, my God! I can’t believe he didn’t know. She grinned as Trips sputtered.
“I knew Mark, yeah! Of course, it doesn't matter, but I didn't know we were posing as a couple! Look, next time, you tell me what the hell is going on! No, you're a moron!”
Ami ran back to the kitchen and poured batter into the hot frying pan. The batter sizzled as Trips threw open the door and sat down at the kitchen table. He donned his sunglasses and took a sip of his syrupy coffee. “Jerk face.”
Ami poured more coffee into his mug. Trips didn’t respond. She sipped her coffee and watched him as he stared off into space behind his giant sunglasses. You look like a praying mantis. Guess you just got your big head taken off by your gay lover, you bug, she mused, chuckling to herself. After making another round of flapjacks, she asked, “So who's Mark?”
Trips glared at her as he balanced his chair on its back legs. “I can see it now. I just didn't get it. I'm so stupid.” He let the chair slam down and picked up the cup of coffee, sloshing some on the table.
“So, who’s Mark?” Ami asked again.
“Huh? Just a guy.” Trips waved his hand and swallowed hard clearly scalded by the coffee. “Hot.” He rubbed his chest then glanced at Ami as he tucked the glasses up over his head. “Lives in Brooklyn. He'll be at the thing.”
Ami placed a plate of pancakes in front of Trips. He splashed on syrup and gulped them down. “I'm so pissed.” He glanced at Ami. “You never met him with Ich?” He shrugged. “Huh. Thought you would have. I took him riding and stuff.”
“Riding? You took me riding. Who is he?” Ami asked, adding in a Bugs Bunny voice, while shaking her spatula, “I'll murderize him.”
Trips flushed. “Not like that,” he sneered as he gulped scalding coffee and stood up. “Jesus fucking Christ, that's hot!”
“Coffee is often served hot, sweetheart.” Ami righted his chair. “Just sit down and slow down.” Ami put her plate on the other side of the table and the remaining pancakes in the center.
Trips forked over another couple of pancakes o
nto his plate. “Ichiro's right. I'm a complete moron.”
Ami chewed for a moment, then with a half-smile, winked. “Yeah, we knew that.”
“Oh, shut it, you,” Trips said, squinting at her. “I mean I'm really glad I live in a civilized place where gay people can get married. Who freaking cares? You know?” He rocked his chair back on two legs. “I just did not see that coming. How could I not see that?” He dropped his fork and chair and rubbed his chest, then put his chair back on two legs. “I can’t eat anymore.”
“Why do you call him Timid, instead of Tim?” Ami asked, taking a sip of coffee.
“Oh, C'maaaan!” Trips spread his arms wide, the front legs of his chair falling to the floor with a thud. “Anybody so audacious as to call himself intimidation?” He imitated Tim introducing himself as he got up from the table with a bow, “'Hello, Mm, Tim O'dation,'” then he got himself a glass of water from the kitchen tap. “C'mon, you just got to take him down a peg. He's a little pussy. I mean it in the nicest possible way.”
“I want to know more about Mark,” Ami said, between bites. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“Yes, he's my boyfriend.” Trips sneered.
“Oh, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitch,” Ami said, in a parody of Monty Python's Fishy Fish.
“Tool,” Trips scoffed. His phone rang. He looked at who was calling, then rolled his neck and picked it up. “What!” he yelled, then sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Slow down. What video? Okay, okay, hold on.” Trips sat down, shoved his dishes aside and opened Ami’s laptop.
“Who is it?”
“Ich. He wants me to look at...” Trips tapped at Ami’s laptop and shrugged, “...something.”
Ami came around the table and watched over Trips shoulder as he opened a browser. She picked up the phone. “What is it, Ich?” Ami listened for a moment, then put her thumb over the microphone. “Says there’s a thing online of your thing. What the hell is he talking about?”
“Gimme the phone.” Trips navigated to a message board and clicked a link. “Okay, it's loading.” He took a bite of his cold pancakes. “These are good, Sweetie. Thank you.” He scowled, and said into the phone, “Not you, douche, I'm pissed at you.”
Boston Under Siege (Book 1): Virus: Page 11
