Colin #3
They both grimaced, and I had to bite back a laugh at how perfectly in sync they were, down to the slightest twitch of a muscle before pushing away from each other. Reno huffed, getting to his feet before reaching down and taking hold of Mika’s arm. “You ruined it.”
“Ah, boner killed,” I said with a sigh, leaving the kitchen.
I glanced into Cait’s office; she was hunched over the keyboard, but she glanced my way, her eyes flicking to the kitchen and smirking at me before tapping the side of her nose.
Oh yeah, she knew I’d been a creep on purpose to break them up before one of them got hurt, broke something, or God save them, drew Xander’s attention.
Speaking of Xander, I could see him coming down a path in the woods as I pulled on my coat and stepped outside to meet him.
I had assumed there was more to the outpost than one building, and that brief glimpse was enough to confirm my suspicion.
He had the same scowl from yesterday and, from everything I’d seen of him, that wasn’t personal against me.
For some people, it might be annoying to have a boss who was perpetually irritable, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, I found it amusing, and maybe a little endearing.
“That had better be just coffee,” he said as he came to a stop, his boots landing in a shallow puddle.
“I’m gonna guess you’re worried about booze,” I said, giving the travel mug a little shake. “Pure caffeine. It’s a little early to hit the bottle. Plus, aren’t we all technically on call?”
“You’re in training, which means you’re always on call. Reno and Mika are on call today, as am I, as is Trevor…wherever he’s wandered off to. Jake is out for the day. We’ve got a couple more guys you’ll meet at some point. One of them is on call, but the other isn’t.”
“Do they have names?”
“Is that important?”
“No, I guess not since I don’t have faces to put to the names. Not that it did me a whole lot of good with Reno and Mika.”
He blinked and rolled his eyes. “They pulled their twin trick shit, didn’t they?”
“They did,” I admitted with a laugh. “I thought I was dealing with some Jekyll and Hyde thing when Mika was the one who woke me up. At least it was a good warning that Mika isn’t nearly as serious as he makes out.”
And if that hadn’t been enough, rolling around on the floor flinging insults that were never intended to land with real malice would certainly have done it.
“Ugh, he’s got sense, and he’s smart…until he and Reno do that…thing they do,” he said with a shrug. When he saw my raised eyebrow, he sighed. “I don’t know if it’s a thing for brothers, twins, or just a case of one being an idiot and the other a potential idiot given the opportunity.”
“And Reno offers that opportunity,” I said with a laugh and a nod.
“Right,” he huffed. “If you keep ’em apart, they’re pretty decent.
Reno has to be kept away from Jake, though, and don’t go thinking that Trevor is going to be of any use either.
He lets them do whatever they want. And if he wants no part of whatever they’re getting up to, he’ll just leave instead of stopping them. ”
“And the other two guys who are as yet unnamed?”
“Somewhere around the Reno level,” he said with a shake of his head.
“They think I don’t know what they get up to when I’m not around, but they’re wrong.
And no, Cait doesn’t tattle. She’ll tell me some shit, especially when she’s fed up trying to corral them, but she’s not giving me a full report.
I doubt she tells me even a quarter of what she’s witnessed. ”
“I notice you don't sleep in the main building. Does that mean you have your own quarters like Cait?”
He nodded, pointing vaguely in the direction Jake had parked the truck last night. “Her cabin is off that way, a couple of minutes into the woods. Mine’s back the way I came, about a ten-minute walk.”
“So, you get real privacy then.”
“Her cabin is bigger and more comfortable than mine.”
“Ah, a trade-off.”
“She…she’s earned the right to some comfort,” he told me, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he looked uncomfortable. Somehow I thought it had nothing to do with Cait, but he was actually being nice about something.
“Was it painful?” I asked.
“Was what painful?”
“Saying something nice about someone?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re really going to start our day off by being a smart ass?”
“Normally I’d point out that a bit of smart-assery is good for people who take things too seriously, but, uh…that wasn’t really smart-ass on my part. That was a genuine question; you didn’t seem all that comfortable saying something nice about her.”
“I’m fine with being nice when people aren’t stupid,” he said with that trademark scowl of his. “Now, are you going to keep being stupid?”
I wrinkled my nose. “If I did, would you actually be nice to me? Or just less mean?”
“Mean,” he repeated dryly, giving me a disbelieving look. “What are you, six?”
“A meanie-faced doo-doo head,” I said without hesitation.
He stared at me as if I’d just mooned him. “Seriously?”
I laughed. “Look, I can’t guarantee I won’t do or say shit you’d consider stupid.
So I won’t make that promise. Just like you can’t promise that you would actually be nice to me.
So how about I try to keep it to a low roar as much as possible, and you try to treat me like your first introduction wasn’t me touching the good ol’ ham candle in the shower. ”
“Ugh,” he grunted, waving a hand in front of his face. “Never call your dick anything like that again, and you have a deal.”
“Sweet,” I said with a grin. “So…what’s on the tour list today?”
“There’s not much to show off,” he said with a shrug. He pointed to the side of the building opposite where I’d first come in yesterday. “See that?”
A path, one that wasn’t made through repeated walking like the one he had used, but cleared through actual effort. “Where’s that lead?”
“It used to be the Operations Center, where Cait would have worked, but she wanted to be in the main living area for some reason. It used to be the main bay for our shit, and we still use it for that. ATVs for the warmer months, and snowmobiles for the colder ones. There’s also a shit ton of equipment, and we have a rotation of who inspects everything at least twice a week, so keep your eye on the board in the rec room.
That’s where all but the kitchen duty rotations are posted. ”
“Got it.”
“You’ll be on those rotations less often because of your primary job, but you’ll still wanna look.”
“I have a random question before I forget, and it’s just me being curious as all hell.”
He eyed me warily. “What?”
“Well, uh,” I pulled out my phone and held it up. “The entire way out here, I watched my bars fight for their lives. Then suddenly it got stronger, and I haven’t had any issues with service.”
“Oh,” he said, and I realized his relief was because he was worried about what I was going to ask.
Geez, he really had a low opinion of me if he was worried about a minor question.
“Cait. She made a point about how important it is to have service out here. Personally, I thought there was no point since we have the internet and ways to communicate, but you try arguing with her when she’s got her heart set on something.
I can barely get them to adjust the budget for more food and toilet paper every goddamn quarter, but she convinced those government tightwads to install towers out this way for whatever fucking reason. “
“I would have pointed out that the men and woman working here could do their jobs better if outside parties could get to them directly. And be able to communicate with each other faster. And then add that it also means civilians around here would have service and be able to call for help if necessary. Better response time than waiting for someone else to report someone missing.”
He stared at me and snorted. “Probably. There’s also a helipad on that building. We sometimes have a bird parked there. It’s shared, but you’ll end up riding in it before the season’s over, so I hope you don’t get airsick.”
“A little,” I admitted with a shrug. “I also get seasick a bit, too.”
He squinted. “You’re telling me the corpsman, the Navy corpsman, gets seasick?”
“I know, right? Doesn’t make a lick of sense,” I said with a snort. “It wasn’t too bad on bigger ships, barely noticeable and went away after a while. Smaller ones, though? Ugh, gotta pop something or I’m fighting throwing up the entire way through.”
“Lovely,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “C’mon.”
“Okay,” I said and had to fight back a smile when I heard him huff in annoyance. Apparently, whether I was being a smartass or cooperative, he was irritated by my very existence. It would probably get irritating at some point, but for now, I had the patience to find it amusing.
To my surprise, he took me down the path leading to the old Operations Center, and I could see it was maintained by more than just people trampling the brush. I wondered if there was a rotation schedule for that, too.
Rather than taking me straight, he stopped where the path split off to the right, and I followed him.
It was only a little way before we came to a small clearing and another building.
There was a tall piece of machinery on the roof, and I squinted to make out what it was.
At best, I could only guess that it was some sort of… well, machinery.
“This is where the twin idiots do most of their work that isn’t saving people’s asses,” Xander told me as he nodded toward the building. “Don’t ask me what they do. I just know they send me what I need to know, and the rest is between them and whatever government handlers they deal with.”
“So, this is the smarty-pants part of the outpost,” I said as I realized Trevor was coming into view on the roof as he mounted the machine and squinted at it. “I’m guessing that’s whatever Trevor said was damaged in the storm?”
“Apparently,” he said with a shake of his head. “Trevor does what Trevor does; you’ll get used to it.”