Colin
Grunting, I rolled over and realized I wasn’t alone. Not that I was alone in the room in the first place, Reno and I had bunked down late into the night and after a brief conversation, I had fallen asleep.
Except it wasn’t so much me being alone or not alone; it was the fact that my bed was no longer a private space.
My eyes snapped open, and I looked up with a start, jerking back as I stared up at Reno with wide eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ! If you’re going to stand there with your dick near my face, at least have the decency to bring me coffee first, or whip it out!”
Reno leaned back, his face turning into a scowl. “Classy.”
“Classy is not practically rubbing your bulge in my face to wake me up,” I muttered, sitting up with a yawn. “For the record, the smell of cooking bacon or fresh coffee wakes me up faster.”
Not strictly true, having a good-looking guy standing over me, dick out was also a good way to wake me up, but the chances of that happening were…
well, maybe not as slim as I once believed.
So far, every goddamn guy in this place was good-looking, especially their…
our surly and decidedly grumpy leader. And a group of guys living in one place tended to get far too comfortable with one another, and dicks had a tendency to make random appearances in that setting.
However, I would expect random nakedness from Jake before someone as mild-mannered and slightly awkward as Reno.
I looked him over and frowned; he didn’t look as mild-mannered as before.
His bed was in disarray, but his shirt was wrinkle-free.
It was button-up, which hadn’t fit the sort of person I’d thought he was at first, and he was wearing…
slacks? Not to mention, Reno was examining far more than he had last night, which was odd because we had definitely gotten the first examination out of the way.
“Cait said to let you sleep in considering you apparently got on Big Man’s bad side and were up half the night cleaning,” Reno said with a shake of his head as if he couldn’t believe I had been so stupid, which made precisely zero sense.
It wasn’t as if Reno hadn’t overheard enough to piece together a picture.
“But it’s late enough, I think it might be better if you got up. ”
“Sure,” I said, stretching, feeling the cool air on my exposed stomach.
Huh, Reno’s eyes flicked to the flash of skin, that was…interesting.
It was still a little soon after waking up for me to figure out Reno’s problem, or why he had gone from falling asleep watching big-breasted women get three-way teamed in the rec room to eyeballing a flash of my stomach in a quick, if subtle way. “Coffee?”
“Kitchen,” he said, stepping back.
I nodded, getting up and walking out of the room and down the hallway, only to stop when Reno came out of the kitchen.
His hair wasn’t flat to his head, but sticking up in a couple of places.
Instead of slacks, he wore jeans, and his shirt was a normal one, with a couple of wrinkles to show it had been folded but haphazardly stuffed into a drawer.
He grinned, holding up a mug. “Caffeine?”
I reeled, turning to look behind me as Reno, clean slacks, smooth shirt, and carefully maintained hair, walked out of…our room.
I covered my face with a groan. “I take back anything I ever said about twins; I fucking hate them.”
Reno snickered, shoving the steaming mug of coffee into my hand. “Sorry, we couldn’t resist…but, uh, what did you say about twins before?”
The other one, not Reno, snorted as he squeezed past us. “He’s probably someone who believes the idea of twins is hot. Not exactly a rare attitude.”
“Ew, I have standards,” Reno said, pushing his twin away, who looked only faintly annoyed at the roughhousing. “Wait.”
“He’s gay, or at least bi, yes,” Not Reno said as he stepped through into the kitchen. “Reno! Stop drinking my things just because I leave them within reach!”
“How do you…” Reno began, and then shook his head, turning to me. “You are?”
“I am,” I said with a shake of my head. “Problem?”
“If I had a problem being around The Gay, I would have been pretty pissed off for the past…uh, when did you come out?” he called into the kitchen.
“It would be more accurate to say that you brought me out of the closet at twelve,” Not Reno called from the kitchen, and I could definitely hear the difference between them.
Reno was more energetic, if slightly nervous, while his brother was more serious and calmer.
There was a note of humor in their voices that connected them though, Reno’s obvious in its playfulness while Not Reno was more…
wry. “And then when I was outed against my will, you finished the process for me with everyone else in our lives.”
“You came out for…” I stepped forward and leaned in. “What’s your name? I don’t want to keep thinking of you as ‘Not Reno’ for the rest of this conversation.”
“And yet there is hardly a nickname I could choose that would not be more accurate,” Not Reno said with a snort as he poured himself a mug of coffee, adding what looked like a precise amount of sugar.
“Mikhail. Most people call me Mick or Mika, depending on your preference. And no, I have no preference; I answer to all three.”
“Oh, you’re the scientist,” I said with a nod.
To my surprise, Reno sighed wistfully. “I’m so tired of everyone thinking you’re the only scientist around here.”
“People who are unfamiliar with scientists think of them as more mature and reasonable, unlike how you act,” Mika said, with a shake of his head. “The average person doesn’t realize that your average scientist is just a strange little man or woman with a vested interest in their chosen topic.”
I took a sip of coffee, amused to find that it didn’t taste cheap. “Does that mean you’re a scientist too, Reno?”
“I am,” he said, and I had to laugh at the way he preened. “Primarily a botanist, with some forestry thrown in, and while I don’t have any paperwork or a degree to prove it, I did some dabbling in bugs too.”
“I can’t say I’m an expert, but I’m pretty sure there’s a word for someone who studies bugs.”
“There is, but if I called myself an entomologist, that wouldn’t be accurate. And a lot of people think of etymology, which isn’t the same thing.”
“I mean, it makes sense; they’re close enough that in people’s heads, they’re gonna get mixed up.”
Mika sighed. “Now you’ve done it.”
Reno grinned. “I know they sound the same, but people mix them up too much; it bugs me in ways I can’t put into words.”
I stared at him, knowing from Reno’s expectant grin and Mika’s tired sigh I needed to reach through the fog of barely being conscious to make sense of what I was…
“Oh…oh God. No, no wordplay, no wordplay! Not before I’ve finished a cup of coffee, and not for an hour after either!
Or I’ll use the big needle when it’s time for a shot when you need one. ”
Reno looked startled. “What? You…you can’t give shots, can you? Big Boss said you were an EMT.”
“And you’d be surprised how many EMTs work on becoming RNs in their free time.
Really helps when you were also a corpsman; they give you a leg up getting through school, not just money, but accepting the training you got as college credits if you bat your eyes at them,” I said with a smirk.
“I wasn’t brought on as just an emergency onsite medic.
I’m here to be your GP without actually being a GP. ”
“What?” Reno asked, looking horrified. “What?”
Mika sighed heavily. “Xander spoke of it repeatedly before he even mentioned Colin was coming to join us. It’s a logistical and administrative pain in the ass to drag a physician out here or to send us back to one for what he would consider the basics.
Colin is a way to stop a lot of back and forth. ”
“I can’t replace an actual physician, but you’d be surprised at the amount of things I can actually do and be trusted with before a doctor has to be dragged in,” I said and then frowned. “Which reminds me, I need—”
“A bigger tour, and to get set up,” Cait’s voice rang out, and I turned to find her eyeing the three of us. “Reno?”
“Here,” Mika said softly, handing over the cup he had been working on, and I realized it wasn’t his original, but another. “I wondered when the noise would drag you out.”
“I could have made her coffee,” Reno said with a frown.
“And I realized she’d want it before you did,” Mika said. “Be more observant.”
“I’m observant! I bought her a birthday gift last year!”
“A week early, and she was allergic to those flowers.”
“I—”
Cait smiled, running a hand down Reno’s head. “The fact that you tried to remember and remembered that those flowers were important to me was more important than the timing, or that they were the flowers my mother had at her funeral.”
“I…didn’t know that part,” Reno said, and I felt bad for him as he winced.
“I meant it, kiddo, it really is the thought that counts,” Cait said with a sweetness that felt at odds with the woman I’d met yesterday, and yet seemed right at home here. “Don’t let perfect get in the way of good.”
“When is your birthday?” I wondered.
“August sixteenth,” Reno said, and then grimaced. “No, wait, the twenty-second. I always get it mixed up with…someone else’s.”
“His first girlfriend,” Mika offered in amusement. “The one that got away.”
“From the guy who can’t even keep a man!” Reno said, turning on his brother with a growl. “What was your longest relationship? Six months?”
“Unlike you and your tissue box girlfriend syndrome, I have standards, so I can figure out if a relationship will work early on without needing to pop onto the next one immediately,” Mika told him, setting his coffee aside.