Quaranteam: Aisling's Antics - Ch. 8 (Patreon)

Part Eight – “It Didn’t Take?”

December 12th, 2020

When they got back from their trip to the city, both Fiona and Aisling found themselves buzzing. Neither had realized quite how much they’d needed to get out of the walls of New Eden, and San Francisco had been quite the experience.

They’d stopped at City Lights Bookstore, and Andy had agreed to do a book signing for them in mid-January as way to draw people out of their houses and to get them back interacting with other people again. Fiona had been surprised that the woman running the store, Brittany, had actually paid attention to the dedications in Andy’s books, but it was mostly just nice to see Andy interacting with a fan of his work.

It wasn’t like Andy was a fame chaser, but he’d been removed from most of an audience for so long that he’d sort of been spinning in neutral, and Fiona had been a little bit worried about him. The reviews of “High Noon At Stonehenge” had been extremely positive (barring a few outliers including one that had bitched that he’d been too sparse with details from the same critic who literally banged on about it reviewing every one of Andy’s books) and that had helped him some, but Fiona could tell Andy was being interviewed as much for who he was (which was to say the face of pandemic survivors) as much as he was for what he’d written. That hadn’t set especially well with him, not that she could blame him.

Fi had spent enough time to know how Andy felt about his books being successful – he didn’t care if they were profitable, particularly, so much as he did care that they were inspiring people to think. Talking to someone who’d read and enjoyed his work who wasn’t friend or family certainly helped stoke his spirits up a bit.

It had also been a nice chance to spend a little bit of time with Sarah without the shadow of Emily lingering around, and the more time Fi spent talking to her while Andy talked shop with Brittany, the more Fi understood where Andy’s crush had come from. She was incredibly positive, but also somehow constantly self-effacing and snarky. She was well-educated and well-read, but didn’t ever want to be seen as rubbing anyone’s nose in her education. Sarah also liked to stay close to Andy, even when she was having conversations with others, sometimes just sliding her arm around his waist or hooking her thumb in one of the belt loops of his jeans.

What was more impressive, though, was that she was making a point of spending time talking with both her and Aisling when Andy was deep into a discussion about the store’s recently passed owner, asking for book recommendations while offering some of her own, and despite the image she could sometimes present as being a little flighty, Fiona was delighted to find that she was remarkably well-read when it came to both literature and film, and the three of them spent at least ten minutes discussing Kurosawa’s “Ran” and how it compared to Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” which it had been derived from.

Fiona had turned Andy onto Kurosawa in college, and it had resulted in a lifelong love for their man, so much so that one of only two posters that Andy had framed around the house that wasn’t for one of his or his partner’s works was an old “Seven Samurai” poster that hung proudly in one of the living rooms. (The other was for John Woo’s film “Hard Boiled” and featured Chow Yun Fat sliding down a banister with a gun in each hand. Woo and his leading man had been the thing Andy had turned her onto in exchange.)

After the group had spent some time talking about books, they’d excused themselves and headed over to Buster’s, a cheesesteak shop that Andy could not stop talking about. It had gotten mention in Andy’s stories in a number of different places, and in such glorious detail, so Fi had assumed it had to have been a fictional place of Andy’s creation, but instead it was a legitimate, real place, not far at all from City Lights, a little corner joint with almost no seating on the inside. In fact, if Andy had brought just all his fiancées to the location, half of them would’ve ended up seated in tables just outside of the place. But with just the five of them, they were an absolute perfect fit for the inside of the location.

To say that the food was remarkable would be to do a disservice to the food, which was some of the best Fiona had ever had in her lifetime. After her first bite, she knew this would be a lifelong habit not only for her but for the rest of the girls of the house as well. The steak had a sear to it that could only from a grill that had baked millions of cheesesteaks, a sort of lived in flavor that gave an incredible depth to the taste.

It seemed like Andy also knew the guy behind the grill at least a little, and that Andy had been coming in quite regularly for over a decade. The man was a tiny little fireplug of a Latino, short and squat, like a Mexican Patton Oswalt. And yet the man had an infectious laugh. It was the group of women working there, one behind the counter and two more out doing deliveries, that seemed like a surprise to Fiona. All of three of the women were stacked with some of the largest fake tits Fi had ever seen, dressed in white zip up tracksuits that they left the top of unzipped enough to show off the goods. They all seemed vaguely Eastern European or maybe Slavic, with dyed platinum blonde hair and a ton of heavy gold chains, their lips painted bubblegum pink.

During the ride back, Fiona had asked Andy if he thought all of partners of the cook, whose name was Carlos, were ex-strippers, something that had made Andy laugh before nodding. He then went on to explain that because Buster’s Cheesesteaks was located where it was, it often had strippers or ex-strippers manning the cash register. Buster’s had a long-standing tradition of being open until “2:30ish” specifically so that when the bars and strip clubs closed for the night, all those patrons who needed a little bit of time to sober up before climbing in a cab to go home would stagger into Buster’s, get some food in them, tip a ridiculous amount, then head home. So he suspected that a lot of those girls simply found out Carlos was alive and available, and they all jumped onto the first life raft they could get.

Once he’d explained it to her, she’d laughed quite a bit of the rest of the ride, which was good, because it helped keep her mind off of how utterly desolate and empty San Francisco had felt. She’d been to the city before, when the pandemic wasn’t on, and it had been vibrant, full of life, chock full of people, almost any time day or night.

That wasn’t how it had felt today.

No, it had almost seemed like a ghost town. Yes, there had been a handful of cars on the streets, and a few people walking on sidewalks, but overall, downtown San Francisco had felt one step away from being a zombie apocalypse film during the daytime, when all the zombies were asleep or in hiding. Many of the buildings had caution tape in front of their entrances, and she saw a variety of flags and sweep and clear signals left by doorways. Windows on upper floors were sometimes broken, sometimes painted black, although she had also seen signs of the cluster towers they’d seen the stories about on 60 Minutes last month.

It was hard to think about how many dead bodies had been pulled from these very buildings, although there was some relief in realizing much of the space they’d been past had been commercial buildings, with no real bodies to clear out. Everyone had just gone home from work one day… and never really come back.

There were a lot of reports how many of the businesses in San Francisco had moved to virtual or work-from-home business models, and how the idea of a traditional ‘office’ was going to go the way of the dinosaur, but Fiona knew capitalism was a dog with the sharpest teeth ever, and once it had sunk those teeth in a bone, they weren’t ever going to let go. The idea of businesses not being able to watch over people while they worked was something any boss would be losing their shit over in rage. Trust? Workers? Ha! Might as well just say there weren’t set office hours, or that people could be trusted with unlimited time off. There wasn’t a middle manager alive who wasn’t champing at the bit to get people back into cubicles where he could keep his beady little eyes on them.

Even the Bay Bridge, something Fiona had been over once in the middle of rush hour, hadn’t had more than two or three cars on it, and they were leaving San Francisco right in what should’ve been the busiest time on the bridge. The whole thing was unnerving, and had given Fi a sense of unease, and by the time they were back to New Eden, Fi was just glad to see a multitude of other people again. She wasn’t even ready to really look at all the pictures she’d taken during their excursion. She was afraid it would leave her feeling empty and distressed.

She looked over and Ash sort of had that same drained look to her, then looked to Sarah, who immediately moved over and hugged both Ash and Fi with one arm each. “Don’t worry, bitches,” she giggled into each of their ears. “It can’t rain all the time. We’ll see brighter days again sooner or later.”

That set both Fi and Ash laughing, as if the tension had popped like a soap bubble, and somehow dissipated the heaviness that had been clinging to them since their return. Both of them kissed Sarah’s cheeks, and when Sarah was walking into the house, Ash turned to Fi and said, “Want to get a bit of work done while Andy’s mulling over the trip?”

“God yes,” Fi said. “I’ll get the wine, you set up your easel and my tape recorder.”

“Meet you down there.”

* * * * * * * *

So, the day before the poker game, they brought Andy two more women who were meant to be additions to the house. You know one of them – Sheridan – but the other was presenting herself as Teresa. I guess she thought that maybe a list of names was being sent on to people beforehand, and she wanted to throw Andy off, but Andy didn’t know she was coming any more than anyone else did.

Where do I start in talking about Erin Teresa Donegal? I’d quickly learn she was Andy’s ex-girlfriend, and she treated him mean in just about every sense of the word. I sort of saw why Andy was at least physically attracted to her? Imagine Hannah’s tits on Sheridan’s body and you’re not too far off. She’s certainly beautiful but in sort of an ice princess kind of way. Andy told me she was a lot friendlier when they first met, but the longer the two of them were together, the clearer it became that she was just using the friendly approach to get Andy to do the things she wanted him to do.

They’d broken up something like a decade ago, and Andy had been basically single ever since, having gone on a handful of dates, but mostly still too messed up from the damage that Erin had done to him. When it came to women, he didn’t trust his judgment, but he didn’t want anyone who wouldn’t accept him as he was either, which meant he’d done twenty or thirty first dates that never made it to a second.

Now that Erin was told she needed a man to latch onto to stay alive, she thought she’d try and get back with Andy, and see if the years without her had made him more pliant, which they certainly hadn’t. If anything, she found that between me and Niko, we’d instilled him with a sense of confidence that proved he didn’t need her ass, amazing tits or no, and he basically told her to go and pound sand.

They argued.

Not a lot, but just enough for Andy to get his point across.

Erin seemed convinced that Andy was going to change his mind, but he didn’t.

Anyway, I don’t like talking about her. She’s a bitch, she’s self-centered, she thought she could come in and be queen bee of the house and instead, Andy gave her the boot. In fact, he’d told us that even if the poker game hadn’t come up, he would’ve sent her back to the Air Force, refusing to take delivery of her, and would’ve explained to the Air Force that she’d shown up under false pretenses. Knowing Phil like I do, I’m sure it would’ve all gotten ironed out anyway.

But I remember the utter tension in Andy’s shoulders right before he left for the poker game. He’d explained the whole thing to me and Lauren, and so I knew he was marching into the lion’s den. He asked me in advance whether or not I thought he was doing the right thing, and I told him that I did, even as weird as it all seemed. Niko had explained about Charlotte and Asha and what kind of man Covington was… well, I knew all about what a bastard Covington was on my own, so that wasn’t really any of a shocker to me.

The hardest part about that night was not knowing what was going on. I threw on “Love Actually” and watched that before loading up “Seven Samurai,” which Andy and I had watched together but always put me at least a little bit at ease. By the end of it, it was just about time for Andy to be showing back up at the house, so I went out to sit on the porch in my pajamas, bringing a thick blanket and a cup of hot cocoa to wait.

I wasn’t out there too long, because about five minutes after I went out, I got a text from Niko saying, “Andy victorious. Heading home.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for us as a family, but I knew Andy would be in at least a decent mood when he got back. About five minutes after that, the car pulled up and stopped right in front of the porch, Niko hopping out to rush over and give me a hug.

“Did the good guys win?” I asked them, knowing a little bit of the answer, but not the whole story.

“Andy got them out safely. Charlotte’s not going to stay with us, though.”

“Oh no!” I remember saying. “Why not?”

“She’s not into me,” Andy joked as he got out of the car. “Had to happen sooner or later,” he chuckled, “and frankly, I'm surprised it took this long.”

“Her loss then,” I giggled, as I looked into the back seat. “Looks like you got two hot young things to add anyway. Why do I know her?” I sort of recognized Piper, but didn’t entirely, right, not at the start. She looked familiar without being someone I could place.

“Imagine her doing a little wiggle dance before she goes to play volleyball.”

That, however, told me exactly who she was. I think nearly everyone on the planet had seen that meme at some point or another. “Shut up! What is even happening!” I remember at that point figuring that the two of them – Piper and Asha – were the only women he’d won. (Plus Charlotte, obviously.) Boy, was I going to get a surprise in just a few minutes.

Andy popped the trunk and pulled out two suitcases, one still in the trunk space. He carried them up the stairs and into the house, as I mouthed to Niko, ‘is this it?’

‘You wish,’ Niko mouthed back, trying not to giggle.

“I'm gonna need a hand hauling them into the house, though,” Andy told me.

I nodded, because he certainly looked tired. “Where are we going to put them? In the master bedroom?”

Andy shook his head. “We've got plenty of extra bedrooms upstairs, and Piper was nearly catatonic before I imprinted her, so the last thing I want is her waking up surrounded by tons of unfamiliar people. We'll let her have a bedroom to herself, although I think you should probably give her a shower quick before you put her into a bed.”

Niko nodded as I helped her pick Piper up. “Good idea. She really is quite ripe right now. C'mon Ash, let's go hose her down.” I couldn’t have agreed more with Niko – Piper absolutely reeked of piss, shit and sweat, so we hauled her into the house and put her in the shower, then hosed her down. We took a good amount of time about it, too, because we wanted Piper to wake up with a good impression of Andy and the rest of us, and not thinking about that shithead Covington he’d obviously rescued her from. I wasn’t sure how bad it had been, but holy shit, it looked like she’d been homeless for about a year. The smell alone was awful, and there was all sorts of shit in her hair, including a couple of leaves and twigs, which we’d find out later were from when she’d tried to escape. She had plenty of cuts and scrapes all over her body, all of which looked self-inflicted, but they were already starting to heal up. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was in the starting phase of a regeneration cycle, so the wounds were already beginning to close. We still put bandages on her arms and legs anyway, in addition to washing her hair and drying it best as we could. We used some of my body wash and shampoo, so she ended up smelling a bit like me when we tucked her into bed, but at least she didn’t smell like any of the filth we’d washed off her.

Just as we were sliding her into a bed in one of the spare bedrooms, Andy came to check on us, and when I say that, I mean it. He trusted us to get Piper taken care of, but he also knew that the very sight of her was going to make us feel uncomfortable in a lot of ways. Niko spent part of the time we were hosing Piper down telling me about how the woman had basically tackled Andy, and that he’d been completely overwhelmed by the experience. God help me, Fi, I’m glad she did, because the comedy of that image made our work go a lot faster, especially imagining Andy trying to comfort this cavewoman covered in her own shit that was basically having her way with him.

“Everything go okay?” he asked us as we walked to the door. By this point, we all knew enough about the imprinting process that nobody was whispering, because there wasn’t any point. Nothing was going to disturb Piper from her slumber before her body was ready.

“Sure, no problem, but she definitely needed to be hosed off,” Niko said. “I'll bring her bag up here so she can get dressed in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Andy said, leaning down to give her a soft kiss. “I'm glad I didn't let you down.”

“You couldn't have, even if you'd lost,” she said, heading towards the stairs.

“So how many more people are we expecting, and did you find a way to get that bitchy ex of yours out of our family?” I asked him, as they both stepped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind them. I knew he was going to send her back, but the idea of her going and living with someone who none of us liked? Well, I’m not so mean as to say that I hoped she’d go to Covington, but I’m also not going to lie and say I would’ve shed a tear if she had.

“Someone'll be coming by to pick up Erin tomorrow,” Andy said, “and in addition to Sheridan staying here, there'll be another three getting dropped off tomorrow.”

“Oh good,” I told him as we headed downstairs. “I like Sheridan. She's feisty, but in a good way. She was showing me how to stretch out and be more limber. Are you going to imprint her tonight?”

Andy shook his head. “God no. Piper was in such a state when we found her that my first load didn't start her imprinting process. It just didn't take first time, so we had to go again.”

I stopped walking. “Wait, what? You mean it didn't take?” Niko had forgotten to mention that when we were hosing Piper down, and I was actually a bit concerned, worried that maybe they should’ve taken Piper over to the base instead of bringing her back home.

“I mean I came in her mouth, and she pushed me onto the floor and crawled on top of me and fucked me like I hadn't even given her a drop. After I pumped a load into her pussy, though, she slumped on top of me, and it seemed to take that time.”

“Well, we can't let the girls go too long before getting imprinted then, if it's going to come to that,” I told him, feeling a little guilty about having thought about sending Erin to that bastard’s house earlier. “Covington's a real prick, isn't he?”

“More than you can even imagine.” Andy rubbed his eyes. “I have to go tell Erin she's leaving in the morning, don't I?”

“It's late, Andy. You can wait until morning, ya git. Hopefully both she and Sheridan are already asleep in the pool house. Lauren's already completely passed out in bed. She's got to go in tomorrow to work with the team. Apparently, they're going to try and hold a football game in a month, which means she needs to be sure the players are all in tip top shape.”

The next morning, after Andy explained to Sheridan that she was welcome to stay, the hostage trades began. I don’t mean that literally, but it sort of felt that way. Trucks came by and brought women over one at a time, Sarah first then Emily. Watkins was supposed to be bringing over another woman named Deborah Barnes, but as it turned out, his son had already imprinted her, which Nathaniel Watkins was furious about. In order to punish his son, he was going to send a woman that they’d requested specifically for him over to Andy instead. That woman would turn out to be Hannah. I haven’t met Deb yet, but I assume based on what Nathaniel’s said, she’d have been a good fit here as well.

After Andy had imprinted both Sarah and Emily, he looked both delighted and exhausted. I’m not going to lie – we’d spent at least a little bit of the time standing outside of the door listening in, at least towards the end, but only because Emily was fucking loud, as if she wanted to make sure the whole house knew she was giving herself over to Andy. We showered with him afterwards, and he told us all about the whole intrigue Emily had done to ensure her and Sarah had ended up together, and how it had almost collided with the intrigue Niko had done to get Charlotte and Asha away from Covington.

That day went from great to horrible in a flash, though, because Phil came over after that, ostensibly to pick up Charlotte, who was already starting to feel a little bit edgy, just because of how long she’d been waiting for imprinting. She knew what to expect, but that didn’t make it any easier for her to take.

And the look on Phil’s face told me something truly horrible had happened, and that it was going to make Andy’s heart break. A little less than an hour later, I found out, along with the rest of the house, that Andy’s brother Matty had died. He’d gone to try and help a neighbor secure some storm shutters, and a week or two later, he was gone. Phil hadn’t heard about it in time to dispatch an emergency set of doses to Matty’s wife, and frankly, he was already so swamped with other things that even if it had crossed his desk, he probably would’ve missed it. Nobody blamed Phil – he was already stretched thinner than humanly possible, and there was just no way to ask more of him than he was already doing.

I feel like I’d only just begun to get to know Matty, even though I’d probably talked to him for a day or two over FaceTime, and the loss hit me almost as hard as it hit Andy. I’d been looking forward to meeting Matty in person, to introducing him to Dermot and watching the two go a couple of rounds of who could tell the worst joke. The next morning I sent my brothers Dermot and Colin the angriest text messages I could, telling them not to break quarantine or that I would have their corpses drawn and quartered. Then I told them that Andy’s brother had died, which resulted in both of them calling me immediately, and the three of us having a good old-fashioned cry in a high-tech way, the three of us on a single Zoom chat. But that was also tempered with good news as well.

The morning after we found out that Matty had died, Andy pulled me into the shower to have a long conversation about what the future, our future, was going to look like. And then he asked me to marry him, which I immediately said yes to, with two conditions.

* * * * * * * *

“What were the two conditions?” Fi asked.

“The first was that he had to ask both Niko and Lauren as well, because I didn’t want to get singled out too much,” Ash told her. “I was here first, and I knew that was always going to carry with it a bit of weight, whether I wanted it to or not, so I wanted to help deflect a little bit of that and make sure that my two partners who’d been in this for months with me were afforded the same courtesy.”

“And the second?”

Ash smirked a little bit. “He had to promise not to feel bad when Lauren said ‘no,’ which I knew she was going to. Her and Taylor had reconnected fast and hard, and despite the fact that Lauren was still furious with her, she and Taylor were… are massively in love with each other. That meant they were going to want to get married at some point, and so Lauren was going to tell Andy ‘no,’ not because she didn’t love him, but because she loved Taylor more, and what she and Taylor had would need to be made official sooner or later.”

“He asked Niko, though?”

“Well, he was about to ask Niko, and Niko being Niko just asked him because she was impatient, and she didn’t want him thinking the rejection from Lauren was contagious. And she, like me, wanted to prep him because we both knew just from meeting them that Sarah was going to want to marry Andy, and because that’s what Sarah wanted, it would be what Emily wanted as well, because those two are sort of joined at the hip.”

“Which is strange,” Fiona said. “They seem wildly different.”

“Sort of, I guess,” Ash sighed. “But not really, the more you dig. They’d both had to hide their bisexuality in Hollywood. They’d both had huge successes which had sort of established their careers, and in some ways, it had sort of limited the options for both in terms of parts they were getting offered and roles they were being considered for. That was partly why Sarah wanted to option Andy’s book – she knew nobody would’ve considered her for the role of the barbarian queen unless she made it happen. And Em’s fallen for Andy too. It’s just taken her longer to realize it, I think, because she’s trying not to crowd everyone else, when you sort of have to make sure you get your time with him in.”

“She’s used to being mostly on her own,” Fi said. “I’ve known girls like her growing up, people who’ve been put on a pedestal only to suddenly find themselves surrounded by a bunch of other girls who don’t believe in pedestals. It’s just a change. By the time the wedding rolls around, I think she’ll feel just like one of the gang, even if we have to rope her in on our own. You have to admit, it’s a lot of people all piling in at once. We should make time to spend some one-on-one with Sarah, Em and Piper, to get them as comfortable as we can in having them among the group. Today felt like a good start between us and Sarah. Maybe we need to organize an outing of our own, or take a trip, just the fiancées, so we can get comfortable being around one another all the time, as well as sharing time with Andy. He’s a people pleaser, so he’s going to do everything he can to make sure we’re all as happy as can be.”

“Yeah, that’s something we can think about,” Ash said. “Although did you see that look on Andy’s face when we got back? Something’s going through his mind, even if he’s not ready to talk about it yet.”

“We’ll know soon enough, I’m sure,” Fi replied. “One thing about Andy, when he gets an idea in his head, he’s going to follow through on it and soon.”