Corrupting Power
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Quaranteam: Aisling's Antics - Ch. 3
🕑 Added 2023-06-30 02:11:09 +0000 UTCPart Three – “Don’t Break Him”
December 11th, 2020
Fiona and Ash took a walk around the lower floor of the house, the two of them stretching out, even taking a few minutes to jump on the trampoline in the large playroom. The basement floor was still the least active of the three floors, but over the last month, several of the women of the house had migrated their personal rooms from the upper floors down to one of the underground ones, making room upstairs for the incoming flood of children. Ash was one of the two women already pregnant, but they hadn’t really told people outside of the family yet, in case the pregnancy didn’t take. Once they were three months out, they’d feel more certain it was going through and they’d be open about it.
Ash’s old studio upstairs had already begun being prepped for being a nursery, just a few doors down from the master bedroom. The talk was that Jade was going to be the house nanny for at least a little while, although the ladies of Team Rook were already trying to figure out who would provide relief for Jade.
Since the 60 Minutes interview had aired, they’d gone about making sure the house started feeling more like an actual home. And Nicolette had gone about breathing more life into the lower level, rotating in some of the artwork from upstairs. Also, the hidden doors leading into the basement were now being left open unless there were guests or visitors at the house, which allowed the cats to wander into the basement floor any time they wanted. Both Muninn and Huginn were playing a very intense game of tag, with the two cats taking turns rampaging after each other down the hallway, although halfway through their game, they decided to take a break to demand affection from the two women walking down the hallway, rubbing against their legs before suddenly resuming the game, although at the onset, it was hard to tell who was starting as ‘it.’
“Did Andy have cats back in college?” Ash asked Fiona.
“Just the one, Odysseus,” Fiona said. “Andy brought him with him from his parents’ place, but he died of cancer in our last year of college. Hell of a cat. He used to perch up on Andy’s shoulder like a parrot and would only hop down when Andy was about to leave the house, and even then, he would act all indignant about it.”
“How old was he when he died?”
“Fourteen, so he’d had a good life as a cat,” Fiona sighed. “He was a such a good boy, not that Andy’s two new cats aren’t. How old are they?”
“They’re both seven. He got them a couple of years after he split from Erin, and they’ve been with him ever since. You didn’t have any pets to bring?”
Fiona shook her head. “Between me being away so much for doing coverage and Moira’s long, brutal hours working in the ER, we didn’t think it would be fair to have a pet in the house. And now between Andy’s cats and Maya’s dogs, we have plenty of fur babies around.”
“Aye, I get that,” Ash said, as they walked past the shooting range and armory, which was quiet. “You going to take Niko and Lexi up on their offer to give shooting lessons?”
“Probably, although I’m a little annoyed that Andy doesn’t seem to feel comfortable with carrying a gun around.”
“Oh Fi,” Ash said, a touch of sadness in her smile. “It’s not that he wouldn’t feel comfortable with it. It’s that he doesn’t want to have to resist even the briefest moments of guilt and temptation about surviving when so many other people didn’t. He knows we all depend on him, but you have to remember, he, like the rest of us, lost a lot of people to DuoHalo. He’s definitely still not over Matty, and who could blame him?”
Fiona frowned a little bit, nodding as they started to walk away from the armory. “That’s right, you didn’t even meet him in person.”
“No, although he plays in big in the next part of my story,” Ash said. “He was incredibly friendly and welcoming when I got to talk to him, which is more than almost any of Andy’s other partners can say. I think you, me, Lauren and Niko were about it. The staff said they would just meet him when he came to visit and, well, you know what happened after that.”
“You had any bits of morning sickness yet?” Fiona asked, desperate to change the subject, even if it was only briefly.
“Just once, so I guess I’ve gotten lucky. That kind of luck can’t last forever, though, so I know my trouble times are coming. What about you? You going to try and get knocked up soon?”
“I’m a bit older than you are, Ash, so it may not be quite as easy for Andy to find fertile ground in me as it was for you, but I’ve been off my birth control since I got the message from Andy last month,” Fiona said. “I’d like to be a mother, but I certainly won’t mind if it doesn’t happen until after I’m married, so I don’t take too much grief from the family. They probably wouldn’t care, what with the world being what it is, but it’s better to play it safe in case.”
“Ain’t religion grand?” Ash joked. “I can’t imagine your family would give you too much stick about it. They’re probably just pickled as punch that you’re happy with how it all ended up.”
“I like how Andy’s approach to the religious ceremony for the mass marriage was to simply throw his hands up into the air and tell us that whatever we wanted, we could have, and he’d go along with it.”
“You know religion’s never been Andy’s favorite, Fi.”
“Believe me, I know. You’ve probably heard, but we had to pretend we weren’t sleeping together in college whenever my parents would come to visit.”
“But not when Andy’s parents came to visit?”
Fiona waved her hand. “They didn’t give a shit. They were just happy that Andy was happy. They were always worried that he didn’t date more in high school.”
“He was a late bloomer,” Ash joked. “But Mama Rook seems to love me, and I feel like that’s all that’s really important. And I got Matty’s approval, before he died.”
“We keep dancing around that, so we should probably head back and get started with the next portion of your tale, so I can have it all on tape,” Fiona said.
“Sure, but keep in mind, there’s parts of this that you should probably omit from your book too.”
“You tell me the story and let me make my own mind up about what’s in and out of the book, okay?”
The redhead nodded as they walked back into her studio. “That’s fair. Now go back and get into your position after you turn your recorder back on.”
“When are you going to let me see it?”
“An indeterminate amount of time after you stop asking…”
* * * * *
The first couple of days with Andy, if we weren’t talking, we were pretty much fucking. And doing both of those, we were usually cuddling. I know there’s that thing called New Relationship Energy, where all the problems and incompatibilities just disappear in the shiny newness of it all, but Andy and I got along like a house on fire immediately. We had similar interests, similar senses of humor and he was genuinely interested in learning all about me, just as much as I was him.
I think that’s what delighted Andy the most early on – that I had so many questions about him and his life, and that almost none of them had to do with his writing career. Oh sure we talked about his time as a writer, about how he dealt with the process of working through fiction, where he got his ideas from and what sorts of stories he wanted to write about on the side, but I also tried not to dwell on that, because I knew he was always talking about that sort of thing, so whenever it seemed like he was running out of energy on the topic of what he was creating, we’d pivot to something else. Typically, he’d ask a question about me or my life, and I’d spiral off on a new tangent for us to talk about for an hour or so.
One thing I had to ask about were all the books surrounding his bed. His tiny little bedroom was crammed with so many books that it felt like he’d just built a little cave inside of a bookstore. I remember asking Andy how many of them he’d read, and he told me it was like 50-60% of them, with the rest around for whenever he wanted something new to read. Authors I’d heard of, authors I hadn’t, quite a few graphic novels, loads of fantasy and sci-fi but also quite a large number of spy fiction books, many of them vintage. He had an entire run of reprints from someone named Richard Stark about a character named Parker that he suggested I give a try, although I haven’t started in on them yet. We have to unpack them all at some point and while the Air Force saved our lives, they didn’t exactly do a great job of packing all the stuff in the condo for us later. I’ve got some pictures on me laptop of what the tiny little room looked like, if you wanted to use those for your book, although you’d need to get Andy’s permission, obviously.
The morning of our fourth day together, Andy’s hand had reached and gently pinched my arm, which I sort of glared at him over. “What the bloody hell was that for, you shite?” I giggled.
“Just making sure you’re really real, and I’m not dying, delirious in some field hospital somewhere,” he said with a laugh. “You’re too good to be true, you know that?”
“You won’t say that when it’s two a.m. and I’m sending you out for a late-night pickles run when I’m pregnant with our first kid,” I told him, blushing a little as the words came out of my mouth, realizing what I’d said. “Assuming you’re cool with us having kids eventually. I shouldn’t presume th—”
He kissed me, warm and tender, before pulling back, pushing some of my hair from my face. “I doubt I could tell you no on anything Aisling Blake. I never really saw myself as a father, but if you think you’d want kids with me, I’ll learn how to manage.”
“I think you’ll make a great father, Andy.”
“You’re crazy, Ash, but I’ll trust you.”
Neither of us wanted to get out of bed, so we stayed underneath the sheet, the fan blowing over us. As much as I loved that cozy little condo, I hated the fact that it didn’t have central air conditioning, so when the weather got especially hot, we just had to open the windows, run the fans and drink loads of water.
We’d been taking turns showing each other our favorite movies that the other hadn’t seen, and last night, it’d been his turn, so he’d shown me this great sort of popcorn spy film called “Sneakers,” and on that morning, I showed him one of my favorites, a very dark comedy called “In Bruges.”
After we finished that, though, Andy asked me if I wanted to meet his best friend or his brother via Zoom. I told him I wanted to meet both of them as soon as I could. I didn’t really know how bad the pandemic was going to get, but I felt a little nervous that anyone I didn’t meet soon, I might not meet at all.
So he decided to introduce me to his brother, Matty. I don’t know how you remember him, Fi, but Matty was one of the nicest, most welcoming people I’ve ever talked to. I probably can’t remember this whole conversation word for word, but lemme see if I can try.
“Remember,” Andy told me as the FaceTime call rang. “Matty’s quite a bit older than me, so we’re at wildly different stages in our lives…”
“Heya baby bro, what’s going on?” Matty said as the call picked up. I don’t know if you saw recent pictures of him, but he was tall, lean and fit, a little over six foot tall, but you could definitely see the resemblance between Matty and Andy. Matty still had all his hair, a sort of blonde moplike cluster, short enough to be respectable but just that little bit longer than it should’ve been, on account of the pandemic and the fact that he hadn’t been able to have a haircut in months. Matty had a big full bushy brown beard, and was wearing a short sleeve flannel shirt, something I couldn’t imagine why, considering how hot it was in the Midwest at that point.
“Hey Matty. I want to introduce you to my new partner, Aisling,” he said. “Apparently they’ve got some way for us to get past the viruses out here, but it involves convincing utterly beautiful women they need to sleep with plebs like me, and so, here we are.”
“No no, I’ve heard a little about this thing,” Matty said. “It’s coming down from the Air Force, right? Do whatever it is they tell you to do, as weird as it may sound. It’ll probably save your life. I’ve been seeing some of the chatter about it, but haven’t had a chance to really dig into it yet. Hey Aisling, how’s my baby brother been treating you? Like a gentleman I hope?”
“Well, only when I want to be treated like a lady,” I teased. “When I want him to treat me otherwise, he’s pretty good at that too.”
“Ha ha! Yeah, well, considering how long that bed of his has been empty, he’s probably making up for lost time, although Andy’s always been pretty good at that.”
“Tell me about you, Matty! I need to know all about my man’s big brother.”
“Well, let’s see. I’m nine years older than Andy, so there’s whole periods about each other that neither of us really knows much about. I even went off to college early, at 16. I married my college sweetheart, Samantha, in 2005 and in late 2009, our only child, Conner, was born. Me and Sam have a real estate company here in Cleveland. It’s sort of her parents’ family business, but I do okay, and we’ve taken care of Conner pretty well. Me and Andy try our best to keep in touch, but he’s out there, not that I blame him. There are a lot of days where Ohio can be a whole lot for anyone to tolerate, even me. You don’t sound like local Californian, though, Aisling.”
“Nae, I’m from Ireland originally. Only lived here in the States for a few years now, but as part of the pairing program, they had me take a compatibility test, and I guess because I’m young, smart and healthy, they sort of gave me free rein to pick who I liked, and I chose your brother, and hopefully he’ll keep me around here, and we can keep on making each other happy for as long as we can.”
“Oh I’m sure your accent’s been driving him wild,” Matty laughed. “He may be trying to hide it from you, but he loves accents, especial—”
“Especially when they’re talking dirty, oh, I know, Matty, I know,” I giggled. “So your wife Samantha works with you?”
“Yeah, although it’s been brutal having to work from home the entire time. Real estate is not a business where you can always just be at home. We need to be out showing properties, talking to people, convincing them to buy a new house and sell the one they just moved into like six or seven years ago.”
“You get that a lot?”
“Not a ton of people moving to Ohio, so mostly it’s just people swapping houses around here and there, although we’re starting to gain a bit of traction with people seeing property in Cleveland as a speculative investment, and who am I to tell them they’re out of their mind?” he laughed. “They want to build a new McMansion out here and hope that it’s going to grow in value and not decrease, hey, I’m happy to sell them the land for them to gamble their money on. I’m even happier to profit off their delusions.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’re exploiting people who have money to burn?”
Matty clutched both of his hands over his heart with a smile and a laugh. “You have, regrettably, correctly identified me, m’lady. I am that most ignoble of beasts… a capitalist.”
I giggled pretty hard at that. “So what kinds of things is your son into?”
“Typical ten-year-old stuff. Legos, Ninjago, Call of Duty…”
“Oh, so you’re raising a gamer child are you?” I scolded.
“No no, but it’s been his support network for the last few months, since he can’t go and play with any of his friends, so they’ll play Call of Duty or FIFA so they can voice chat and not go crazy being stuck at home all day with their folks,” Matty said. “I don’t blame him. We didn’t have indoor apocalypses when we were kids. But he’s doing his best to keep exercising and trying not to think about how he’s not going to be going back to school at least until the spring, maybe even later. That’s not the kind of news he wanted, and the open-end date of the whole thing is only making it worse. He just wants to get back to life being normal. Who can blame him, right?”
“We can’t control the path of the river, but we can do our best to keep our heads above water while we’re floating downstream,” I said to him.
“Old Irish proverb?” Matty asked me.
“Nah,” I laughed. “Just some shit I made up, but I liked how it sounded when I was saying it.”
Me and Matty and Andy talked for about an hour or so, and I remember thinking that while the two men were very similar, Matty was so much more confident and self-assured than Andy was, but also that Matty had a tiny hint of sadness about him, something I chalk up to him deciding to settle with his life, as opposed to chasing the wild blue frontier like Andy had done. They’d both clearly come from the same starting place but had decided to forge wildly different paths for themselves.
Later in the day, though, Andy called his best friend Xander to introduce me to him. Now, you lived with Xander for a few years, so I’m sure you’ll have your own perspective on this, but here’s how I remember it going.
When Andy told me that his best friend lived halfway across the country, I was somewhat surprised. I’d already figured out that while him and Eric were excellent flatmates, they weren’t the closest of friends. For that, I needed to talk to Xander Baker, and I wasn’t at all sure what to make of Andy’s description of him. He was a mountain of a man, sometimes ripped, sometimes just large (even fat), with a big shaggy panda-colored beard, his body mostly covered in tattoos. They’d been best friends since they were, like, seven or eight, I think Andy told me. They’d met in Little League, both hated it, but even when both of them dropped out, they remained best of friends, even throughout high school and college, even ending up as roomates. But, I mean, the man was still rocking a mullet, Fi! How the fuck was I possibly supposed to take a man with a mullet seriously?
“Hey Xander, I want to introduce you to my new partner, Aisling,” Andy said, turning the phone’s camera so that it included me in the shot.
“Goddamn, Andy, you’re punching about ten steps above your weight class, man,” Xander laughed. “I don’t want to be mean, Aisling, but you are so far out of my boy’s league that I think you may have even left the state.”
“Awww,” I laughed, rolling my eyes. “This is your best friend you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Best and oldest! But I have to call them like I see them! You’ve got to be, what, a decade younger than Andy?”
“A little more than that, but age is a number I don’t give a shit about, Xander,” I told him. “Besides, boys my age are fucking stupid. They’re always thinking with their dicks and they don’t give a shit about emotions or feelings. Andy’s not at all like that.”
“Well, I try not to be,” Andy said. “But everyone’s guilty of not thinking things through every now and again.”
“So Xander, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a mechanic.”
“You’re a Jiffy Lube guy?”
Xander didn’t take it personally and just laughed at me, shaking his head. “Nah. I mean, I do some basic car repairs and whatnot on the side, but most of my time is spent repairing and restoring classic cars. Andy keeps telling me he wants one of those 1968 Chevy Corvette C3s, but I keep trying to explain to him that they aren’t just laying around the place.”
“That’s awfully specific.”
“It’s in an anime he loves, so, y’know, I guess the man’s allowed to have his peculiarities. What about you, Aisling? Any specific car you’d ever want to have?”
“Wouldn’t mind an Aston Martin DB7 GT if you’re just giving away classics,” I laughed. “’Course, it wouldn’t be legal to drive it here, what with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.”
Xander shook his head. “Nothing illegal about it. I mean, it’d have to be imported here, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. I’ve actually had some right-hand drive cars come through my shop a few times. You couldn’t take it through any drive throughs without a passenger, but I can keep an eye out.”
I waved my hand at him. “I couldn’t afford it even if you did, but thanks.”
“And what do you do for a living, Aisling?”
“You can just call me Ash, Xander. And I’m a graphic designer, working freelance for Google, so sometimes that’s web design, sometimes that’s print or billboard signage, sometimes it’s logo design, sometimes it’s shite I’ve never even thought of that I must figure out how to do on the fly.”
“You like it?”
It was remarkable that I don’t think anyone had really asked if I liked doing what I was doing up until that point. They’d ask if I was happy with Google, or if projects were interesting, but nobody seemed to think about how much joy I was getting out of daily work, but Xander cut right to the quick of it, something I’m sure you know as much as I do that he’s remarkably good at, and probably one of the many reasons he and Andy are such great friends.
“It’s work?” I laughed. “I mean, sometimes I like it, but other days, it’s as though I’m just being overwhelmed by pedantry and meaningless little shit that at the end of the day nobody’s ever going to notice.”
“That’s why it’s a job, though, innit?” he teased, poking a little fun at my accent. “Don’t worry, if you get particularly bored, you can always mockup new covers for Andy’s books. I’m sure he’d love that.”
“Still right here, you know?” Andy interjected with a laugh.
“Can you run downstairs and make me a cup of tea, love?” I asked him.
“You just want to gossip about me behind me back.”
“It’s much more becoming than if we do it in front of you,” I joked. “I just want a couple of minutes for Xander to tell me your deepest, darkest secrets. That’s all. Promise.” I leaned in and kissed him for a moment before pulling back, giving him my winningest smile.
“I find out you’ve been telling her about Atlantic City, Xan, and I’ll have your hide,” Andy said, handing me the phone as he slid off the bed and headed downstairs.
“Do I need to know about Atlantic City?” I immediately asked.
Xander shook his head. “It’s a head fake, meant to pull you in the wrong direction. I have to ask you, though, how serious are you about Andy?”
“I’m certainly with him until the end of the pandemic, but I imagine it’s going to be the rest of my life,” I said, surprised at how protective Xander was suddenly sounding. “I’m his partner, and I take that seriously.”
Xander nodded a little. “Good. I just…” He sighed, looking down at his hands before he looked back up at me, trying to put the words together. “Don’t break him, okay? Andy’s had some truly shit luck with relationships over the years. Some of it’s been of his own making, but most of it, well, he’s just gotten some bad beats. His last relationship was the sort of shitshow they write country songs about, and the one before that, well, I thought they were probably in it for the long haul before life got in the way. And I’ve had my own share of women complicating my life, and Andy and my’s friendship. We stopped talking for a couple of years because… Shit, because I was a fucking idiot, and when my wife said it was her or my friends, I didn’t take it as a giant red fucking flag and run screaming for the hills. But… look, this is the important thing, the thing I want you to absolutely understand about my best friend. After two years of our friendship being basically dead, I got divorced and kicked my ex-wife Annie as far from my life as I possibly could. But the day I decided to divorce her, I called up Andy, out of the blue, and begged Andy to yell at me, to tell what a fucking moron I’d been, to say that he’d told me so, and you know what he did?”
“He didn’t do any of those things and he forgave you,” I said, trying not to tear up a little bit, imagining the whole scenario.
“Well, after I basically forced him to tell me ‘I told you so,’ then he forgave me. And he’s never brought it up since. We’ve had a few points where I’ve needed to vent about her to someone, and he’s always let me rant and rave and get whatever off my chest that needs shouting, and he’s always supported me and never been mad.” Xander inhaled a breath and wiped a tear from his own cheek. “Because of that, I consider it my sacred duty to make sure nobody fucks up my boy, you understand? You seem like a great woman, a little younger than Andy probably needs, but maybe I’m wrong and you’re right on that one. Still, Andy is my best, oldest and most reliable friend, and I won’t just go to bat for him, I’ll drive into hell with my hair on fire if there’s even the tiniest chance that I can pull him out of it, even if the odds are that I go down with him. He’s not just my ride or die, Ash. Andy’s my blood brother. He’s my family. I’m only going to say this once, because I don’t think you need to hear it, but I still need to say it. You hurt him, and you will have made a deadly enemy for life, and I willmake you regret it.” The look on his face was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen, because at that point, I understood exactly how deep the friendship these two men shared ran, and I’d never seen that level of trust and camaraderie between any two people in real life before. And that look of implied threat, it was only there for as long as it took me to recognize it before it was gone. “But I don’t think you’re gonna hurt him, so I just needed to make sure I’d said my peace. Welcome to the family, huh?”
* * * * *
Fiona laughed a little bit as Ash stepped away from her canvas. “Yeah, Xander looks like a giant teddy bear, but if you rile up the grizzly bear, he can scare the crap out of anybody. I remember when Andy and I first started hooking up, he told me that shit had gone sideways a bit for Andy before me, and that there was still shrapnel in Andy’s heart that I was probably going to be picking out for a while,” Fiona told Ash. “And that was before the hot mess disaster that was Erin. She got so damn lucky that her time dating Andy coincided with Xander’s time with Annie, because if it hadn’t, well, I think things would’ve gone a lot differently for her. Hell, I’m still looking forward to them eventually meeting at some party the Watkins throw.”
“Lord Jaysis help us,” Ash laughed. “We’ll have to make sure Samantha knows to keep him from flying off the handle when the two eventually do meet.” She gestured that Fi could get up from her seat and stretch again. “I think I expected Andy’s big brother to be the one with the ‘don’t you hurt him’ speech and Xander to be the ‘we’re all family here’ rather than the other way around. But Xander’s good people. And I still miss Matty, even for as little as I knew him.”
Fiona nodded. “You’re not alone there. But you got to talk to him, even a bit, which is more than most of the family’s ever going to have had. So, treasure those moments.”
“Oh, I do, Fi. I do.” Ash frowned. “I haven’t told Andy yet, but I think if it’s a boy, I think I want to name him Matthew, in honor of Andy’s late brother.”
“I think he’d like that very much, Ash,” Fiona said, giving her a hug. “And so would I.”
Comments
Ian B
Just got to this one. Enjoying this story “ramping” up
Edward Becerra
I still think it's a shame Xander didn't get a bodyguard named Faith... :)
Dashinhi
NGL - Xander's bodyguard having the same name as Andy's SIL (and both being discussed in the same chapter!) threw me for a minute when I read the end of this AA chapter - had to go look at the cast. You’ve got an enormous ensemble in this story, good on you keeping them all in order!
Admiral Ale
Very good story. Something to wet the whistle with, but prefer the main course. Stay safe.
