25. Bertram
Bertram
“Is this a sex thing?”
Helena spat out her coffee, then shrieked as she desperately tried to mop the liquid from her notes. She whipped off her sweater to use it as a rag, spilling the rest of her coffee as she did so.
“Sorry,” Diana said with a crooked smile. “I guess that was a bit of a cheeky question. I was just curious.”
“It is not a sex thing,” said Helena, blotting her notebook frantically.
“Why do you ask?” Bertram cocked an eyebrow. “Do you know something we don’t?”
“A lot of things, probably, as old as I am.” Diana laughed. “But one thing I know is that there are human subcultures into this kind of stuff. Not always as a sex thing! But, like. I don’t know why someone else would put this much time and money into something so weird otherwise.”
“That’s completely counterintuitive,” Helena said, holding her sopping-wet sweater at arm’s length. “Of all the things which unequivocally necessitate financial investment, sex should be at the bottom of the list. You can have sex for free!”
Bertram opened the box, revealing the custom owl-bear suit Jennie had commissioned from a talented artist online.
He had to admit that it looked like the kind of thing that, for certain People, probably was a sex thing.
He didn’t ask his mother how she found an artisan who specialized in making full body humanoid-proportioned animal suits .
. . but Diana may have been on to something.
Bertram noted he would have to bend his arms slightly to keep them at the correct proportions for the owl-bear “front legs,” though the back legs were kept fully Bertram-length so he could move.
Two useless wings sprouted from the back, held upright with wire armature to give them some semblance of life.
The mask was the true masterpiece. It was covered in individually sculpted foam feathers and featured a metal beak painted gold that could be opened and closed using a hidden mechanism in the suit.
There were bright, shiny eyes that allowed Bertram to see out, but wouldn’t let the cub-chick see him inside.
“What do you think?” Bertram asked Diana with a smile. “Want to see me in it?”
Diana beamed with delightedly disgusted admiration. “It’s just so, so horrifying that I don’t know why anyone would want it if it wasn’t their kink.”
“There are a nigh-infinite number of other scenarios in which an owl-bear suit would be useful,” Helena said.
“One could use an owl-bear costume in a theatrical production or an immersive spiritual retreat to try to connect with otherfolk or they could wear it to add more weight to physical exercise while also creating inspirational symbolism of a powerful animal or for a film production or for tactical camouflage in highly specific situations! Anyway. I have things to do. Because the actual answer to what the owl-bear suit is for is very, very important rehabilitation work for a vulnerable species. So. Goodbye.”
Helena stomped off toward her tent.
Bertram noticed that she was stepping a bit strangely. He wondered if she’d spilled coffee into her shoes.
Diana watched Helena leave, then turned back to Bertram. “I’ve been meaning to ask, is something going on between you two?”
Bertram shook his head. “Definitely not.”
“Mm. She seemed pretty heated when she thought I was flirting with you.”
“Were you flirting with me?”
Diana’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe. Do you want me to be?”
“Maybe.” Bertram smiled. “Being up in the mountains, I’m mostly just glad we have someone who’s willing to deliver.”
“Oh, I deliver,” Diana said, and there was no mistaking the huskiness in her voice or the look in her eye. “Should we . . . grab a drink sometime?”
Bertram couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hit on so directly. And not only that, but by a funny, cool, beautiful, sexy woman with a cool flying bicycle.
A woman so beautiful and sexy that she completely drove all thoughts of Helena out of his mind.
Bertram was now definitely thinking about Diana, and not wondering whether Helena had spilled enough coffee that her socks were wet, too, and he was picturing Diana naked, not trying to remember if Helena’s socks on the clothesline were dry now and if they would be too cold if she put them on, and he was imagining fucking Diana, not thinking that he should probably go get a pair of his socks and loan them to Helena so her feet would stay warm.
Yes, his plan was working perfectly, and he was now thinking about kissing Diana’s breasts, not clothing Helena’s feet.
He should also make sure she had a clean sweater, because she was bad at remembering to do laundry (thus the possibly wet socks) and he could loan her a sweater, too, if she needed it.
Diana, not Helena.
He could loan Diana a sweater. After she was naked. Because Bertram had had sex with her.
Right.
“I shouldn’t leave basecamp until the egg hatches,” Bertram said. “But after . . . Well . . . First. Uh, just to be clear … I bounce around a lot, and I’m not the type who, when it comes to ‘relationships’ per se—”
“You’re here for a good time, not a long time.” Diana nodded. “I understand.”
“Okay, great.” Bertram sighed with relief. “In that case, I’ll let you know when I can get away for that drink.”
“I’ll be counting the days,” Diana said with a smile.
“Me, too,” Bertram said. “Mostly because that’s a crucial part of our research.”
Diana laughed. She had a great laugh. She seemed like a really great Person. A fun Person who he could completely fall for, and he should really go check on Helena.
Diana departed on her flying bicycle, and Bertram headed for the lab, making a few stops along the way. He paused outside Helena’s tent.
“Hel?” he called. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” she called gruffly.
“Did you fuck up your socks?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Yes,” Helena grumbled, “and the rest of my socks are still drying.”
“You know,” said Bertram, “if you didn’t wait until you were on your last pair of socks before doing laundry, you would have dry socks right now.”
He could hear Helena huff and imagined the eyeroll he knew accompanied it. He heard her footsteps as she stomped toward the front of her tent and angrily unzipped it.
“I don’t need judgment from—” Helena stopped as Bertram pressed a bundle of his socks and a sweatshirt into her hands. “Oh.”
Bertram smiled and winked at Helena before continuing on toward the lab.
“Thank you!” she called after him.
He didn’t respond. He was too busy thinking about Diana and her charming smile and her dark hair and her soft thighs and her unmatched statistical prowess and encyclopedic knowledge of Leopardopteran otherfolk—aw fuck, that was still Helena.
Bertram seated himself at the computer and started reviewing the MagiTracks 5.2 commands and menus, while trying very hard to fantasize about Diana.
He snorted aloud. His college self could never imagine a time that he would be highly focused on analytic software while trying to force himself to think about an attractive woman.
“I said, thank you for the socks.”
Bertram turned to see Helena wearing his sweatshirt, and Helena wearing his sweatshirt was immediately more arousing than the idea of Diana naked.
“You’re welcome,” Bertram muttered.
“And the sweatshirt.” Helena gestured to it. “It’s so cozy.”
“You look cozy,” Bertram said, leaving off all the other adjectives that were springing to mind for how she looked.
“Are you checking the MagiTracks update?!” Helena squealed.
“Did you look at the document I made with the list of shortcuts? I know there are shortcuts on the drop-down menu, of course, but I figured if I just made a list it would be like a shortcut to the shortcuts—so, there’s the Daily Sorcerer, and under that are the different sections where we’ll fill out V-2’s daily physical stats, food offered and food eaten, any training sessions to impart life skills.
I figure we’ll probably find a way to utilize positive reinforcement training to encourage novel behaviors without direct—”
Helena stopped abruptly, and Bertram worried that she could tell what he was thinking as he stared at her in his sweatshirt.
“Did you hear that?” Helena asked.
“Hear what?”
“That—that low rumbling. It almost sounds like it’s coming from the egg!” Helena leapt away from the computer and bounded across the room.
If there was one thing that could take Helena away from statistical analysis of otherfolk—and there was, in fact, only one thing—it was otherfolk themselves.
“Yes! It’s coming from the egg!” Helena clapped her hands. “Bertram, the egg is purring!”
“I don’t hear anything,” Bertram said. Which was unusual—with his half-vampire heritage, his hearing was usually much sharper than Helena’s (mostly) human hearing.
“Then come over here!” Helena frantically gestured him over.
Bertram crossed the room to join her by the egg. He waited . . .
Helena leaned her ear against the incubator where the egg lay safe and warm. “Oh, my goodness, it’s practically a roar when you’re right up next to it! Come here, listen with your head on the glass!”
Helena stepped out of the way so that Bertram could put his ear up against the incubator.
“Did you hear it now?!” Helena asked.
Bertram leaned his head against the incubator, but all he heard was the low-thrumming of the solar-powered heating and humidity controls.
“Nope.” Bertram shrugged apologetically.
“Seriously?” Helena’s face fell. “I think the baby is just messing with me at this point. Like that old cartoon with the dancing cat, but he never dances when his Person asks him to do it in front of other People.”
“Yes,” Bertram said with a smile, “I’m sure the owl-bear egg is just like the cartoon dancing cat. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking? Or you’re hearing some other noise and attributing it to the egg? Is it just the buzz of the incubator?”
Helena scoffed. “No, it is not just the buzz of the incubator. Not unless the incubator sounds like a sort of . . . prrrvvvrrtgggghhhh mraaawww . . .” Helena did her best to imitate the deep rumbling she heard from within the egg, punctuated with little squeaks and growls.
Bertram laughed so hard that he had to lean on the table for support.