Quaranteam: Piper's Prelude (Ch. 01)

Part One of Five

(a commissioned work)

As the sound of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" barked out of a little portable speaker, Piper Brown found herself wondering if it came right down to it, who had more endurance, her or Sheridan. They were two entirely different types of athletes, but Sheridan's endurance was not to be underestimated.

Sheridan was currently leading most of the girls in a workout, but she had also definitely tailored it so that everyone could keep up and break a decent sweat without anyone being overly taxed, although it wasn't remotely close to the sort of high-intensity stuff the two of them did most days after the general class.

The November air was crisp by California standards, but it wasn't so cold that any of them were freezing their asses off, despite the tight workout clothes. Most of the girls were definitely aiming to get a solid workout in, but more than a few of them were also intent on looking cute while they did it, something Piper didn't really understand. Andy generally wasn't a morning person, and even if he did come and check them out, the man loved all of his partners unflinchingly. He wasn't going to judge them if their hair was a mess while they were out doing aerobics and cardio. Hell, she thought to herself, he'd probably find it adorable.

The sky was overcast and the app on her phone said there was a 40% chance of rain later in the afternoon, but that the morning should be fine.

This particular morning, Sheridan and Piper had gotten their power workout done first and then gathered the girls up for a general calisthenics and fitness class, something they tried to do at least three times a week for multiple reasons. It made sure none of the girls were neglecting their workouts, first and foremost, but it was also a chance for the girls to get together and gossip a bit afterwards. Lord were they a chatty bunch post workout, sitting around the dining room table, talking about the past few days, their schedules for the upcoming day, who'd had fun time with Andy (or each other) and making sure the Needs board had been updated accordingly. It was like a thrice weekly brunch party.

When Piper had first seen the Needs board, she'd thought it was ridiculous, a tablet-like LCD screen designed just to have a single application on it. All the women's names were there, and the last day they'd gotten their fix from Andy, as well as a "do by" date, as in "he'd better do me by this day or else I'm going to lose my goddamn mind."

The expression wasn't figurative, as she knew all too well from personal experience.

Piper had come around once she'd realized the sheer monstrosity of scheduling it took to keep track of this many people, let alone keep straight the last time they'd connected with the man of the house. Whitney was even in the process of coding an app for their phones so they could all update it remotely, and that Andy could check it from wherever whenever he wanted to.

She hadn't updated the Needs board last night after she and Sarah had taken Andy for a very solid thrill ride, so she made a mental note that she'd have to do so after brunch. It had been a fun night, and had eased off a little of the tension she'd felt around Sarah, although she still felt a little starstruck by Emily. The woman was a goddamn international movie star, even if her star was a little bit on the wane. Em needed to stop picking such dumb arthouse flicks, Piper thought to herself.

It was a little remarkable to her that, despite all the big and varied personalities in the house, there weren't many actual splits or disagreements, something Piper attributed to Ash and Niko's stern guidance. If the House of Rook had been a volleyball team, while Andy would have definitely been the coach, Niko and Ash would've shared the captain's job. (Beach volleyball teams were only two people, so there wasn't really a need for a captain there.)

The connection she'd built with some of the women here over the past few weeks had made up for the fact that she hadn't been able to see her actual squad, the rest of the volleyball team, in a few months, although she had talked to all of them either via Zoom, FaceTime or good old fashioned phone calls, since her arrival at Andy's house on November 3^rd.

She was stirred from her memories and reflexive workout motions by the scent of Andy, and she knew he was out on the balcony behind them. Being able to track him by sense of smell had been fundamentally unnerving at first, but now she sort of drew comfort from it, as it meant she knew where her rock was, and how to find him.

When the girls bent down to touch their hands at the ground beneath their feet, Piper made sure to give her ass a little wiggle, since she knew Andy was looking on, and wanted to give him a cheeky little show. He didn't seem to favor boobs or butts, but just generally liked the female form, and good on him, she thought.

The song mercifully came to an end, and as it did, Sheridan pointed over their heads behind them, drawing all the girls' attention to Andy standing on the balcony. All the girls looked over their shoulders then, once they'd realized it was Andy, they all turned to look and wave at him.

"Good morning, angels," he shouted to them.

"Good morning Andy!" they cheered back in his direction.

"You know, you really ought to join us some mornings, Andrew," Emily teased politely, placing her hand on her bared pale hip.

"Mmmm," he replied to them noncommittally. "I'd be worried about making a fool of myself." He wasn't in great shape, but he wasn't in terrible shape either, although in the months since he'd gone from no partners to many partners, he'd apparently lost quite a bit of weight from all the constant sex he'd been having. In fact, just a few days ago Piper had seen a picture of Andy and Aisling when she'd first joined up with Andy in May, and he looked many pounds heavier. There were worse ways to shed excess weight.

"I can make sure we don't overwhelm you on your first work out, dude," Sheridan said to him with a wink and a grin. Piper knew that she meant it, too. Sheridan had the perfect demeanor of a fitness instructor, just the right amount of encouragement while still pressuring to push onward. "Let's give it a go tomorrow, 'kay?"

Andy groaned a little bit, but raised his hands in surrender. "God help me. Okay, I'll give it a try, but no making fun of me!" She was glad to see him caving in. Within a few year's time, the house was likely to be flooded with children, and that meant he needed to be ready to handle it, even if he was going to have plenty of hands around to help him when he staggered.

All the girls made various catty comments and gestures as he rolled his eyes and headed back into the house, knowing they were only teasing. He'd gotten good at recognizing when the girls were giving him shit, which was essential, since the girls loved to give him shit whenever they could.

'Stay humble,' Emily always said, and Andy certainly did that in spades.

"Hey Piper," Fiona said, walking over to her. "I was wondering if maybe you and I could break off from the group brunch this morning. I've got something I want to talk to you about."

Piper had liked Fiona and Moira right from the start, especially since Fi had a certain level of cheekiness to her that made Piper feel like she was back with her volleyball squad. It also helped that Fi and Andy had been in a relationship for a long while back in college, so even if he'd changed a bit over the years, she still probably knew him better than most of the people in the house, and she'd always been willing to have a conversation about how he might take something, or what he might be thinking.

Fiona had even been one of the two people Piper had gone to when she'd been worried that Andy hadn't taken her request to bring Brooke in seriously, the other being Aisling, naturally. But Fi had stressed to Piper that Andy rarely did anything without thinking, rethinking and overthinking, so if he had passed on Brooke, there were likely very good reasons for it, even if they weren't immediately evident. After Piper had explained all about who Brooke was and what she was like, before Piper could continue, Fiona had asked if he'd suggested she get paired up with Xander. Piper had been shocked, but said, yes, that was what had happened, and then Fi had suggested Piper just wait until she saw Brooke and saw if she was happy with Xander, and to her astonishment, Brooke had been exuberant with Xander. They'd turned out to be a far better match than Brooke and Andy would've been.

"Hey, you were great council for me, Fi," Piper said as she rolled up her yoga mat. "What's shaking?"

"C'mon, let's get breakfast and we can go sit on one of the balconies," Fiona said, tucking her own yoga mat under her arm, heading back towards the house. "So Brooke was happy with Xander?"

"Happy is the understatement of the century," Piper laughed. "That girl is lovestruck, and just from meeting him. They're gonna be rebuilding cars together in no time. I guess you're right -- she and Andy probably would've been too different to make it work, and she's in New Eden now, so I've got a friend I can go over and see on the reg. I love Andy to death, but we need to start getting out of this house more."

"I'm still in the honeymoon phase," Fiona said, "but I get you." Despite the fact that Fiona was twelve years her senior, the woman wore her age remarkably, barely looking a day over thirty, and yet, there was a confident grace about her that Piper hoped she might one day gain herself. She was almost as tall as Piper was, which was also nice, considering so many of the girls were half a foot to a foot shorter than she was.

The gaggle of women filed into the house, and each of them put their yoga mat into an individually marked little cubbyhole in a massive cabinet just inside the patio door, inside the room they'd converted into a gym. They were having exercise equipment brought in a bit at a time, but they'd also put in some very non-typical things to start with, such as a couple of stripper poles, a high hanging scarf and a pair of aerial rings, mostly things that Sheridan used as an acrobat (although she'd also insisted that she was going to teach each and every girl in the house to pole dance eventually).

Sheridan headed over towards Piper and Fiona, a smile on her lips. "You going to be free this afternoon to spot me, Pipes, or should I make other plans?"

"Why don't you take today to help Tala with getting her workspace set up?" Piper said. "I know she and Jade have made a bunch of progress, but it'll give you a chance to spend some time with her and maybe you can break the ice with Jade a little bit. We both remember what it's like to have new girl syndrome."

Sheridan rolled her eyes and flipped her frizzy blonde hair back over her shoulder. "Yeah, okay. Maybe I can get her to loosen up a bit, while I'm at it. She seems so damn uptight."

Piper grinned, as she realized clearly Sheridan hadn't heard. "Oh, you should ask her about her experience getting imprinted to Andy, then. And if she won't tell you, ask Ems. Better yet, ask her over brunch and Em will probably just volunteer it."

The blonde acrobat giggled a little bit. "No ways it's totes all that."

"All that and the bag of chips, Sher."

"Well hot damn! Then I guess I gots me a story to get."

Before they could get breakfast in, the girls needed to get their showers done first, and the pool house, which was going to be Tala's workspace soon, also had a large communal shower attached to it, so the girls headed into that, which let most of them chat while they showered. Piper asked Fi when they first got in what she wanted to talk to her about, but she'd insisted it would keep until breakfast, and at that point, everyone sort of diverted the attention to Sarah, who was playfully complaining about how wonderfully her ass hurt after their encounter with Andy last night, but also remarking on how much fun it was to play with Piper lending a hand.

One of the things that had surprised Piper about all the girls in the house was how they were so playfully competitive about what they had and hadn't done with Andy, and in particular the game between Emily and Sarah seemed especially intense. It also gave the girls chances to gossip about what they were planning on springing on him next, and what she heard while she scoured the sweat from her skin about what Hannah, Taylor and Asha had planned for him made her wonder how long it would take for Andy's jaw to lift off the floor.

Despite the fact that more than half of the girls were bi, nobody ever seemed to get up to much other than showering when they were in the group shower. Piper wasn't really into women, but she wasn't against them being around when she and Andy were playing. She didn't mind touching or caressing the other girls, or having them caress her, but as she'd heard the comedian Jackie Kashian say, "I'm gonna need the pointy bit." Besides, having some of the girls around when she was involved with Andy gave her someone to bounce off of, and it wasn't like they hadn't all seen other naked plenty of times. She supposed that her resolution was going to get the ultimate test when Emily tried to convince her to have a go at her. Piper knew she was, like, 90-95% straight, but when it came to Emily Stevens, she was only human, and Emily could tempt even the most fiercely hetero woman.

After the shower, they all headed towards the dining room, but Fiona and Piper detoured directly into the kitchen. Jenny was just finishing up preparations for breakfast, and Nicolette was starting to relay food out into the dining room. If the girls had special requests, they were always invited to make them, but on group workout days, Jenny had just taken to making family-style buffet lunches, and the girls were encouraged to just grab whatever.

Andy had clearly been through the kitchen recently, because there was a plate with hot sauce on it sitting on the kitchen island from his morning breakfast burrito, and both Jenny and Katie had a healthy glow to them, meaning they'd likely gotten their fix just a few short minutes ago. She hadn't noticed it at first, but now after having spent a few weeks in the house, there was no denying that a woman just after having had an encounter with Andy had a certain sense of being energized to them.

"Hey Jen," Piper said, "me and Fi are going to sit up on the back center balcony. You think Nic could bring us up a couple of plates and a couple of coffees?"

"Absolutely positively not, you crazy, crazy bitches," Nicolette teased. "Yeah, sure, no problem. Mind if I get the group served first?"

"Sure sure," Piper replied. "No rush."

Nicolette shot her a thumbs up as Piper and Fiona exited the room, heading towards the stairs. While group brunch was a tradition, it also was the sort of thing people had been known to dip out on from time to time. Sarah and Emily had video conferences with agents and directors, Hannah and Asha sometimes had virtual classes, and while it was nice to get lots of the girls around one table, sometimes people just had other things to do.

"So what's up, Fi?" Piper asked as they started to make their way up the stairs.

"You know I'm a journalist, right?" Fiona said. "Forgive me for not remembering if I've told you or not, but it's a lot of people here and sometimes it's easy to slip on who you've told what."

"Yes, Fi, I know you're a journalist," Piper replied with a soft smile. "Both you and Andy have mentioned it." They reached the top of the stairs and started walking down one of the hallways, towards the large French windows that opened onto a nice deck balcony overlooking the back yard that held a half a dozen chairs or so. "You want to talk to me about the Olympics? Because I'm pretty sure they're going to be delayed for a good long while, considering how many people are dead in the world. Or maybe you wanted to talk to me about the 2016 Olympics."

"Well, I wanted to talk to you about the Olympics, but only indirectly," Fiona said as she opened the doors, letting the two of them move out onto the patio, not bothering to close the doors behind them, knowing that Nicolette would be up with brunch in not too long. "I've decided to write a book about the entire plague, a sort of oral history if you will, a collection of survivor's stories about their experiences with the plague, with being moved across country, with the imprinting process, with all of it. And I wanted to see if it was okay to get your story, and to use that in my book."

Piper frowned for a moment, considering it. Her journey to the House of Rook had been anything but idyllic, and for much of it, it would be her word against other people's. She hadn't even told Andy the entire story yet, simply because parts of it still made her skin crawl even just thinking about what she'd endured. And yet, it also struck her that it would be an important story to reclaim, that in talking it out she could try and move past the survivor's guilt and would be able to get some of the weight off of her shoulders. "Parts of it are pretty fucking rank, Fi," Piper said. "I don't just mean dark; I mean fucking midnight pitch black. You sure you want to get into this?"

"It's your story to tell or not, Piper," Fiona said, "but based on just the little bits I've gotten from the other girls, I think it's an important perspective to hear. Besides, don't you want to talk to someone about the experiences you went through? Andy said even he hasn't heard the whole story, and I think you've got to talk to someone about it, so why not me? Also, don't you want me to write about what Covington did to you for everyone to know about? It's one way you can definitely stick it to him."

She inhaled a deep breath and then sighed it out, considering her options. "Everyone in that fucking house is going to say I made it all up."

"Except that Andy and Niko can corroborate the state they found you in, so it's not going to be so cut and dry," Fiona chided. "Plus, you never know what I can get people to tell me. I'm damn good at my job, Piper, so if anyone in Covington's house is going to talk, I'll find them and get them to talk."

"Here's your breakfast, ladies," Nicolette said, laying the tray down on the little table between them. Piper was convinced Andy was right -- the girl secretly was a ninja and just hadn't told anyone. Whenever she wanted to, the maid had an uncanny ability to appear or disappear, to arrive or leave without anyone noticing. "Pineapple juice for Piper, and coffee with cream and two sugars for Fiona."

"How the hell did you know how I like my coffee, Nicolette?" Fiona said, tilting her head to smile at her.

"You made a reference to it in a story you wrote eight years ago, and I found it when I was doing my research," Nicolette said matter-of-factly. Fiona was agog at that, and Nicolette tried to hold her composure for as long as she could, but after a few seconds devolved into a fit of giggles, letting Fiona off the hook. "Oh my fucking God, you really will believe anything about me. I asked Moira, you dummy, and she told me."

Fiona let out a breath and then laughed herself. "I cannot believe the balls on you."

"And you bought it," Piper teased. "She's good, but she's not a fucking wizard, Fi."

"You say that now..."

Piper turned away to pick up her glass of pineapple juice. "Anyway, thanks for this, Nicolette. If we--" She looked back over her shoulder and Nicolette was already gone, having even closed the door behind her without either of the two women noticing. "Okay, so that is impressive."