by

Yanick Champoux (38%)

Lee Watts (18%)

Josip Nað (17%)

Michel Lacombe (16%)

Dorian (4%)

goldkngt55 (3%)

Andrew Avila (2%)

Marten (1%)

Oliver (1%)

Part 35

Michel Lacombe (23/2/2002)

"Happy?! Byran, we have people..."

Demuel stopped himself. He had almost fed the Hazat free dirt on them there. Not the kind of emotional impulse he would've succumbed to normally.

Are we about to have your period or something?

Sourly, Maddie's biological calendar flashed into their shared memory bank. No, that would be a couple of weeks away still. Dem had to get a grip on his temper, was all.

"May I stand?" Linares, having not been in intense pain for several seconds now, was beginning to regain his composure.

Dem let him go and sucked on Maddie's bloody lip pensively. Linares excused himself, marched into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. By the time he came back out, the bodymates had decided to be perfectly honest with him, mostly because they didn't really care about Toast one way or the other.

"We... That's my toothbrush." Linares had splint his finger with the first available oblong. Worries of further suffering shimmered in his eyes. "Forget it, what I meant to say was, we didn't do anything to Ben. Actually, we didn't even know his name. He wasn't coherent when we found him..."

"E-e-e-e-egg-PLANT!" Ben chimed in helpfully.

Dem had done a fairly thorough job of explaining Ben's plight when the door whooshed open again. He spun around mid-sentence, sweeping up his trusty chair along the spin and mentally calculating the distance between its legs in case he'd have to break more than one person's nose at once.

"I'm sorry, is this a bad time?" Lima's apologetic smile disappeared the minute she had a clear view of Maddie's face.

"How did you open the door?"

"Oh dear, what happened to you?" Lima threw herself at Mad/Dem, ignoring the upraised chair completely. Dem hadn't given Maddie's split lip a second thought, and to Maddie's surprise, neither had she.

"Hope for you yet, I told you." They put the chair down. Nothing to write home about, putting a chair down, but this was the first unconscious concerted action that they noticed themselves performing. It felt uncomfortably natural. The paradox made them feel vulnerable, and they let the superb Aragonese distract them from it.

Lima's adorable look of concern accentuated itself with a frown Demuel couldn't help smoothing away with a fingertip. "Hope for what? Don't talk, I have to look at that. What happened to you? Don't talk, wait."

"Tripped, knocked it on the back of the chair. Which is why, y'know..." Lima dabbed the last drop of blood away. "...I was mad at the chair when you came in." He patted its back. "But I've forgiven it now. How did you open the door?"

"I work for the Charioteers, remember? I asked Jesús for your key. He's head steward, we go way back. I called in, like I told you I would? There, that's not so bad, I don't think you'll need stitches, but we should get you some ice. So my supervisor said that because of the accident at the spaceport, I could take a couple of weeks off, right? For post-trauma recovery and suchlike? So I have a free cabin of my own, that the company's paying for, and I was coming to see if, well, you'd be cramped in here and I think I have some ice for that lip, and I have space for one more if you were going to..."

She closed her eyes, cleared her throat and smiled a little wider. "I'm rambling. Sorry." She opened her eyes again.

Dem stared at her hungrily for a moment and said "Your call." Before Lima could make anything of that, Maddie's face softened and that playful undertone returned to her voice as she turned to ask the others if they could manage without her for the night. Lima giggled inwardly. Anything she thought might displease others, she had learned very young to do inwarldy. She was very relieved that her nervous rant hadn't turned Maddie off. Maddie's snide comments to herself were a little weird, but Lima had seen much worse and Pancreator help her, that woman was gorgeous.

Maddie could have gone on all night, but she had mercy on her non-augmented lover and let her catch her breath a bit. Quietly, she checked on Byran and Ben, left them sleeping in peace and came back to cuddle Lima, who had waited awake for her.

"You know, I wouldn't believe that last thing was physically possible if we hadn't done it."

"Yeah, I know. Surprising that it's even enjoyable, eh?"

Lima nuzzled closer. "Oh, it's very enjoyable."

"So how does a nano-engineer end up working a travel desk?"

"I couldn't find a decent job. I mean, literally, the only serious offers I got from engineerig firm bigwigs were, you know, indecent? And not work-related?"

Dem/Mad examined the lovely cardioid face lying in its mess of sunbleached tresses, gazing back with promises of tenderness in her black eyes and a grateful relaxation of her smile. "Yeah, I can see how that could happen." He/she ran their hand up and down her body under the sheets, and brushed their sweet little nose against the rounded flare of Lima's nostrils and the softness of that smile, impatient for their own lip to heal and make kisses less masochistic. "I mean, I can understand where the instinct comes from. Shitty way to treat someone, still."

"Yeah, that instinct is a lot more welcome here, you know?" A lazy taste of Maddie's nose tip, Maddie's upper lip grazing her chin. "Anyway, the ones who didn't want me like that simply didn't want me. One look and I was tagged. Good-looking airhead."

One of the bodymates almost said 'Gorgeous airhead' but the other vetoed that particular compliment.

"But the pay's good and I meet wonderful people." Lima's voice was trailing off.

"Go to sleep now," Maddie whispered. "You'll love how I'll wake you up."