QT: Aisling's Antics (Ch. 04)

Part Four - "You and me"

December 11 ^th , 2020

They were on their break walking around the basement when Aisling dropped a bombshell on Fiona. "I take it the next part of your story's going to be about Lauren," Fiona said as they stopped to pet Muninn, who'd begrudgingly settled down long enough for Fiona to stroke his back a few times.

"Nah, not really," Aisling said. "I know none of this is going into the book, especially since we're talking away from the tape recorder, but I sort of knew right away that Andy and Lauren were never going to really be on the same emotional level as me and Andy are. That isn't to say he doesn't love her, because he absolutely does, or that she doesn't love him, because she absolutely does as well. But Lauren and Taylor have always been each other's Big Love, and as much as Lauren's biologically tied to Andy, her heart belongs elsewhere. I mean, c'mon, you've had to notice that for most of the last month, Taylor and Lauren have always tag-teamed him rather than going one at a time."

"Of course I'd noticed, but I'd wondered how much of that was down to Lauren and Taylor just fully recommitting to their relationship," Fiona said with a giggle. "I remember when me and Moira reconnected, and let me tell you, that was an intense couple of months. We didn't get out of the house most nights."

"Well, as soon as Taylor showed up, Lauren's hesitation with Andy made total sense. It wasn't like she was holding back with him, but I think both Andy and I could tell she wasn't going all in the same way I was," Ash said. "And that was fine. It was early days when she showed up - they were just starting the Oracle program and didn't have anywhere near as large a pool of candidates. I had a few days to establish me and him first before she showed up, but I think once she landed on our doorstep, that was when we knew things were going to get a little crazy. I've talked to Phil a little bit about it, and he told me there was just an effort to quickly double down on the people who'd said they were open to polyamory, like a backup plan."

They made their way to the small little lounge area downstairs where Nicolette had left them some tea and fruit, and based on how warm the tea was, they must have just missed her, only convincing Fiona even further that Nicolette was some kind of super ninja.

"I'd sort of wondered if she was feeling bad about not being asked to marry Andy, but..."

"Oh, they worked it out without much conversation, really. It was pretty amicable between the two of them, what with Lauren and Taylor talking about getting married to each other at some point in the future. They're both still likely going to bear Andy's children, but that's just the way of the world now. If this family was a pyramid scheme, Lauren's tier two."

Both Fi and Ash had a good giggle about that. They needed to take a break, so the two of them stepped into the backyard, stripped down to nothing and then slipped into the hot tub for a little cool down. Neither was used to having their own hot tub on demand still, so they were doing everything they could to get used to the new home. It had really been a massive adjustment, and even now, the whole layout still hadn't fully settled in almost anyone's mind. There were simply so many rooms, so many corridors, so many things to keep straight. Ash had joked around that they should have the layout on a map in their dosing app, but Niko and Lexi had immediately put their foot down, saying that it was "sensitive information" and that there was no way they were making that information accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

They'd been in the hot tub for about five minutes, sitting mostly in silence, enjoying the warm water, before Ash spoke. "Do you think I should start carrying a gun?"

Fi turned her head in surprise. "Where's this coming from?"

"Just a little bit ago, you were saying that you were disappointed Andy wouldn't carry a gun himself. I've been thinking about that. Maybe I should reconsider Lexi's offer to train me into shooting. Andy's the love of my life, but he's... he can definitely be too optimistic, too trusting of people. I know basically Niko or Lexi are going to be around looking out for his well-being any time we're out in public, but..." She sighed. "I dunno. Maybe I'm just wonderin' if that's not going to be enough. Maybe we should insist all the wives are packing."

"If you want to have a gun on you, Ash," Fiona said, "I can respect that, but I'm not keen on the idea of having one on me all the time. There's always the chance of the weapon going off, or of you shooting yourself instead of your attacker. Eventually I'm sure they'll convince me to learn how to shoot, how not to be a complete klutz with it, but having one around all the time? I'm just not up for that. I think each girl should decide for herself, but I just wouldn't feel safe having a gun on me all the time. Leave the weapons to those completely trained to handle them, you know?"

"Mmmm," Ash said. "I can respect that. But I also feel like maybe two armed guards around Andy isn't quite enough and having a few more wouldn't do anyone any harm. Besides, I'd look like a bad ass with a gun in my hands."

"That you probably would, Ash," Fi said. "I think I'd look like a soccer mom trying to front and fail on every level."

"Nah, you'd look like that actress you look like in the film where she loses her memory and fucks shit up with Sam Jackson," Ash teased. "But if you don't want to carry a piece, nobody's going to tell you that you have to."

"That's good," Fi said, before the two sat in the silence of the hot tub for a couple more minutes. Eventually, however, Fi broke the silence again. "You really think I look like her?"

"Want me to prove it?" Ash giggled. "Say 'chefs do that.'"

Both women devolved into laughs before grabbing towels, drying off as they headed back into the hidden basement of the building. When they got back to Ash's studio, they found that Nicolette had left lunch for both of them, as well as a couple of cocktails. "How does she know everything in the house that needs doing, and do it with nobody seeing?"

"It's the mark of a really great housekeeper."

* * * * *

Like I said, there isn't all that much to talk about with me and Lauren. We got along fine, but even from the onset, I could tell there was someone else in the picture who would figure into things later. Yeah, I wouldn't know Taylor's name for months, but her presence? Sure, she figured into that time like you wouldn't believe.

We had fun with expanding Andy's mind a little bit, though. I'd figured out we weren't his first threesome early on, but when he told me it'd been a long while since he'd gotten laid, I knew we had some major rebuilding of confidence to do, and Lauren, bless her heart, hadn't really been with men much, despite going both ways, so I sort of had to do the overselling for both of us.

It wasn't too hard, convincing Andy that he was a sort of sex god. I mean, in most ways, I'm not really exaggerating with that. He wasn't exceptional at first, but he was still good, damn good, and his willingness to learn made up for any shortcomings he might have had at first. You know that about Andy - if you give him a task and tell him it's important, he will do absolutely anything to get good at it, as good as he can be.

I mean, the man already ate pussy like a champ, but everything else? We got there soon enough. He was a very eager student, and each time, whether it was the vaccine running through my veins mixed with his DNA or just the fact that he was hellbent on learning everything he could about both me and Lauren meant we both felt pretty loved up early on.

I felt a little bit more possessive about Andy than Lauren did, but it wasn't obvious to him, I guess, even when I was at my worst. No, telling you about early days with Lauren, you're not going to learn a whole lot about me and Andy and how we got along.

Which is why we're going to skip forward a little bit and talk about the next member of our family to join, Niko. Don't grin at me like that. You're the one who's going to figure out how much of what I tell you you're going to want to include in your book. It might well be none of this whole next section, but hey, that's for you to decide, not me.

So, the day before Niko showed up, Lauren and I got to meet Phil for the first time, although at that point, we didn't really know how deep Phil's ties to the whole thing went. I thought he seemed like a guy well deep in the know, but it would be months and months before we found out how much Phil had to do with the Quaranteam vaccine.

Still, during Andy and Phil's conversation, we got a hint of the bigger picture to come, with Phil talking about maybe as many as five million people dead by the end of it, which, we both know now was a gross underestimation, but I like to think he was trying to keep Andy from losing his shit too much while still being able to talk to someone about what was going on. That was also the day that both the former President and the former Vice President collapsed, and early in the wee hours of the next morning, the Speaker of the House was sworn in as President Pro Tempore.

Later that day, there was a knock on the door and Niko was dropped onto our lap. While she wasn't in quite as bad a state as Piper was, Niko had clearly been given her dose much earlier than her arrival on our doorstep, because she wasn't thinking entirely clearly. Not so poorly that her judgement was impaired, but she was not in the mood to wait if you follow my meaning. She basically had her way with Andy in the common area of the tiny old condo, and we had to carry her up to bed afterwards.

In the middle of the night, she sucked Andy off, and in the early hours of the morning, she fucked him while he was still sleeping. It took three full dosages of Andy's love before she felt like the fog around her brain was starting to clear.

The very first thing I realized about Niko was that she was quite a bit younger than Andy. I mean, I'm a decade younger than him, and she's half a decade younger than me, so while Niko assured us she liked older and more mature men, I also knew it was going to be one of those sticking points with Andy for a while. She was 22 at the time, but even still, that might as well have been an entire generation for Andy.

It didn't hurt that she was insanely gorgeous either. I don't know if she's told you about her heritage, but she's half Lakota, a quarter Japanese and a quarter Mexican. It gives her this exotic beauty while still making her deeply American, unlike me and Lauren. She was chill and easy-going and very approachable and friendly.

Within the first day or two, though, I was pretty sure Niko was lying to us.

I didn't think they were big lies, or important lies - well, important to us I suppose - but I had a strong sense that she wasn't being honest about what she did for the Air Force, or how she'd come to join our family. The last thing I wanted was for our family to built on a foundation of lies, so about a week or so after she'd joined the family, I asked Niko to go out and take a walk with me.

We'd sort of gotten the impression from Phil that as long as we stayed away from other people, now that we were vaccinated, it wouldn't be too bad for us to take walks around the neighborhood, and I wanted to get Niko away from Andy so I could size her up and sort of lay down the law a bit.

"Sure," Niko said. "Let's walk for a bit. I could do with getting out of the house."

We waited until evening, so it was cooling off and the heat wouldn't bake us, and we took a flashlight with us, at Andy's insistence. He offered to come with us, but I told him I wanted to have a bit of one-on-one time with the new girl.

The first couple of blocks, we sort of walked in silence, until she spoke first. "Am I in trouble, Ash?" Niko said, a wry grin on her face.

"You tell me, soldier."

"Airman."

"Fine," I said, correcting myself. "You tell me, airman. Why do I get the feeling you're not being entirely truthful with us? You said you'd read one of Andy's books, but you said you didn't really remember it, and I'm thinking that's 'cause you'd never read it at all. So why lie about that? To boost his ego up a bit?"

"To make him feel like I'm not just a stowaway dropped in his lap for him to take care of," she sighed. "You know he's basically got the pick of any woman on the planet that he wants, don't you?"

I remember thinking to myself how odd that sounded at the time, and decided she was being figurative rather than literal. "You're gorgeous, you're smart, you're funny - why wouldn't he want you?"

"I'm Air Force," she said. "Lots of guys refuse to date military girls. They say we're too uptight, too unpredictable, too emotionally unavailable."

"You hear Andy say any of that shit yet?"

"Not yet but—"

"And you're not gonna," I said to her, "because Andy doesn't think like that. If anything, he's embarrassed for you, that you're stuck with him."

"He's a level 5, Ash. That means he's somebody really important."

I laughed at her, shaking my head. "He's a fluke. He got that status by doing a random stranger a favor, and the level 5 status was his reward. I mean, I get the impression that he might have some friends with a certain level of clout, but if you're worried about him thinking you're uptight, you can disabuse him of that notion any time you like. I mean, didn't you take that test we all took?"

"Yes ma'am," Niko said to me.

"Call me 'ma'am' again, Niko, and I'll stab you in your sleep," I chuckled at her. "So how did you and Andy end up?"

"That's just it - I don't entirely know. I was supposed to be paired up with somebody else, but when we got to that man's house, he was already dead. So they brought me back to the base and told me to find another option."

I could tell there was some other part of the story she wasn't telling, but I didn't want to push her. Not yet.

"Do you regret being saddled with Andy?"

"Fuck no," she told me, suddenly very worried that I'd thought she wasn't into our shared man. "Look, Ash, Andy seems like a great guy, and I don't regret being paired up with him at all, but I figured it was best not to tell him he wasn't my first choice, because he'd probably get up in his head about it."

"I doubt that he would," I sighed, "but I suppose you're right in that there's nothing to be gained by telling him that information. But that's not my biggest concern with you."

"Oh no?" Niko asked me. "Then what is?"

"Look, right now, the whole world is in one colossal free fall. I heard you talking with Andy the other day about how the numbers we got from his friend Phil were probably underestimates, and that we were looking at loads of men being dead before this whole thing stabilized. Now, I haven't been with Andy all that long, but I have to tell you... I would die for that man. I don't know if it's the drugs, or the confined spaces, or some unique biological quirk that the two of us have, but I am head over heels for him, and I intend to marry him and bear his children as soon as things have settled down a bit. He makes me feel like nobody I've ever known, and that means it's my job to look out for him."

"What about Lauren?"

"Lauren likes Andy, and she enjoys fucking him, but I wouldn't say she's completely in love with him. Maybe they'll get there; probably not though. And that's okay. It means there's a sort of established pecking order. I'm going to end up being his wife and she's going to end up being one of the house concubines," I laughed, as Niko laughed with me. "And now we've got to figure out what to do with you."

"Hate to say it, but I think you have to keep me," she teased.

I smirked, rolling my eyes. "You know what I'm getting at."

"I do, Ash," Niko sighed. "And I hate to say it, but I think I'm more on your side of things than Lauren's."

I stopped walking for a moment, the two of us on a foot bridge that crossed over the nearby freeway. "Why do you hate to say that?"

"Because it puts us in conflict, doesn't it?"

"Does it?" I asked.

"He can't have two wives, now, can he?"

"Why not?" I asked her.

"I'm pretty sure it's against the law," Niko said with a soft laugh.

"I'm pretty sure it's not going to be against the law before the end of the year," I told her.

"You think?"

"Men are falling like dominos, and the only workable solution they have is a vaccine that doubles as a sexually transmitted disease. They're going to need to repopulate the country, and if they're saddling all these women up with so few men, laws are going to have to change," I told her, tugging on the top of my workout pants, making sure they were above my ass crack. "Do you want to be his wife?"

She looked down at the freeway, completely empty as it was, and tapped her palm against the fence awning covering the bridge. "I think I do. You know in the first day of getting to know him, I basically had to tell him to stop asking questions so I could get a few of my own in edgewise. He was completely invested in getting to know me, and learning what it would take to make me happy in our new arrangement. Can you believe th—well, of course you can believe that. You've probably gotten used to it."

"Andy's focus is a hard thing to get used to, but you'll get there eventually. And you'll learn that he's a hell of a storyteller, once you find the right buttons to push and the right knobs to twist to coax them out of him. It's not that he's unwilling to talk about himself; he'd just rather get to know you for a while until it feels like you're genuinely interested in learning more about him for a change."

"I'm interested in learning more about him now," she said to me. "Are his books any good? Would I like them?"

"They're not for everyone, but I've come around to them. Of course, my older brother is a fiend for them, and he's been trying to get me to read them forever, but you'll know pretty early on whether or not there's any appeal to you or not."

"If there isn't, is he going to be mad?"

"Mad?" I giggled a little bit, shaking my head. "No, he's not going to be mad. A little disappointed, maybe, but not as mad as he's going to be if you lie to him about liking them when you don't. Give'em a read, and don't let me make up your mind for you. And give it a few books. You can tell with the early ones that he's still sort of finding his footing in long form storytelling, but there's potential all over the place. But that's not the only thing you're hiding from us, is it, Niko?"

Niko looked at me with a wry smile that made her seem much older than her 22 years. "You're very good at reading people, aren't you, Ash?"

"When I started to realize we were going to be getting more women in this house, I realized that Andy's going to need someone looking out for him, making sure nobody's taking advantage of him. His own best friend told me to protect him, so that's what I'm going to do. That means I need to know what's going on here, Niko."

She sighed, and we started walking again. "What I'm about to tell you, I want you to very closely think about keeping to yourself, at least for the time being, okay?"

"Niko, we're both bonded to Andy, which means we're bonded to each other as well. I'm not about to break that trust lightly."

"With men dying off so much, it means existing men are going to become, well, a resource. That means they're now in high risk of being kidnapped, like, all the time. As such, it means men are going to need someone who are, essentially, bodyguards. That's me. I'm going to be Andy's bodyguard."