Page 51 of Throwing Fire

“Snow, you want anything?” Gig calls when he sees me.

“Tea.”

“Comin’ right up. Hey, take a look at Vizzion! Level forty-three, man.”

Vizzion’s the VR war-game he’s got me playing. And if he broke level forty-two while I was out of commission, that’s really going to piss me off.

The lounge is empty, walls dark. I don’t bother to tap them on as I settle onto my favorite couch. It’s a deep, oxblood Kubus. Heavily padded. It’s usually comfortable because it supports my back. Rightnow, it’s comfortable because the padding cushions all of my aching parts. And there are a lot of them.

I sink back into the couch, extricate the bunny from my pocket and pop her down next to me on the seat. Although most of the rabbits like to cuddle, they don’t like to be held in a human lap. It’s a scent thing again. Human laps are smelly. Because Kez and me fuck a lot, my lap is especially smelly. The rabbits like to have a sniff, but they don’t want to sit on me.

I wait until Mingle goes into the babies’ version of thepet-meposture. Their heads are so big, they end up in the pet-me posture a lot, not always deliberately. The babies’ pet-me position is a little different and involves flattening their ears as well as lowering their little faces. Mingle’s helicopter ear sticks up, but the other one goes flat, so I start petting her and am rewarded with the mumbling noise the rabbits make. Kez calls ittooth purring, and they evidently do it by grinding their teeth together. I haven’t investigated too closely, since rabbit teeth don’t interest me. I just enjoy the effect.

I’m contemplating turning on the viewie and watching the day’s flash, when Mingle’s head lifts under my fingers. Her sticky-up ear pricks, and she swings her little bulldog face south-east, towards the front door.

“Who d’you think that could be?” I ask her, not expecting a reply. I don’t get one; I don’t need one. I know who’s coming, and the tension I’ve been carrying since I woke up alone finally drains away.

“... what I don’t understand is how you could loseoneof my shoes, Nev. How did you lose one and not the other? Were you only wearing the one?”

That’s Kez’s voice. She sounds annoyed, which she often is with Nev, her fuck-up friend. Nev must have been home the whole time, which doesn’t surprise me because she doesn’t have a job and at seven months pregnant, doesn’t go out much. It also doesn’t surprise me that she didn’t come to greet me. Nev’s not my favorite person and I haven’t made any secret about it. She tried with me, at the beginning. But Nev’s got only one mode with men, and I didn’tappreciate the constant come-on. So I avoided her until she got the message and started returning the favor.

I hear them come through the greenhouse. Three women, by the footsteps. Light. Two with a shorter stride and one with a longer one. The longer stride is Kez. I’d know her walk anywhere. The others are probably Nev and Chiara. One of them’s wearing heels, which I can hear cutting into the turf. Probably Chiara. Kez almost never wears heels. Her footsteps are soft, so I’m guessing she’s wearing running peds. I hear them pause in the kitchen, the beginnings of an introduction to Sylvie. Then Kez’s long stride, coming closer.

I turn on the couch. Shift the rabbit out of the way.

Kez comes straight to me, climbs into my lap and puts her arms around my neck. She doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. I just slide my arms around her, tuck my face down against hers and breathe in the sweet soap scent of her hair.

“Um, Kez?” Chiara says. I lift my head and look at Chi. Not hard, not ugly, but Chiara gets the message. She backs out of the lounge, back towards the kitchen. “I’ll, uh, give you two a minute.”

“Make it ten,” I say, before burying my head back in our warm, safe embrace.

Kez turns her head so she can whisper into my ear, “I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. We were only supposed to be gone for a half-hour. Goddamn holo-drops. I swear, I’m going to kill Chiara long before her fucking Crackle.”

I chuckle. “It’s okay, kitten.”

“Oh, you sound so much better.” Kez kisses me. Keeps kissing me like she’s never going to stop. I let her. I missed her, even though we were only apart for a few hours. I missed this. This instant intimacy. The melting of the boundaries which keep us separate individuals. Finally, when my lips feel like they’re glued to hers and all I can taste is the sweet spearmint of her mouth, she breaks the kiss and comes up for air. Presses our foreheads together. “I missed the sound of your voice.”

I run my fingers through her hair, along her cheek. “Me, too, kitten.”

She grins. “I missed hearing you call me that.”

“Yeah? What’d I miss? Fill me in.”

“Well, you were in surgery for six hours. That looked like fun. Then they put you in a medibed. You were all still.” She waves her hand, which I guess means I was still messed up. “They wouldn’t let me sleep with you. That’s the first night?—”

“We haven’t been together.” I cup her face. “Won’t happen again.”

She squeezes her eyes closed, and I see the purple shadows beneath them. “I slept next to you. As close as I could.” From those shadows, I don’t think she got much sleep. “I was going to be there when you woke up. You were supposed to sleep for at least another twelve hours?—”

“No one’s ever been able to predict what I’ll do.” I rub noses with her.

“I should have known.” She kisses my nose, my chin, and finally my mouth. “You said I know you better than anyone has ever known you. I should have known.”

“Anythin’ else?”

She shakes her head, rolling her forehead back and forth against mine lazily, smiling, clearly enjoying the skin-contact. “No one’s tried to kill me, or Chi, today. It’s been really dull. And jeez, what’s it like having Mike around all the time? I swear, he tried to follow us into the ‘fresher.”

I’ll take boring. And it’s reassuring to hear that Mike is back on the job. Nothing against Tyng’s internal security people, but Mike’s better than all of them combined. “Any word from anyone?”

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