Original Fic: Little Birdies (3 of 10)
Title: Little Birdies
Genre: Original Science Fiction (containing Slash, Femmeslash and Het elements)
Rating: R-ish (NC-17 eventually?)
Summary: How did she know? A little birdie told her.
Previous chapters found here.
Chapter 3: Woodpecker
"Okay, we drove you all the way here- you know you have to invite us in for coffee." David looked over his shoulder as he talked to her as she was gathering her bag and unfastening her seatbelt.
"David, she already told us her life story and stayed for your sleepover. Don't you think we ought to leave her in peace for a while?" Jeff disliked when David got fascinated with a new toy or a new person. He always tried to slow David down a little for his own good.
"Oh, stop." David poked Jeff in the shoulder. "She loves us, don't you, sweetie?"
Heather looked at them- David hopeful and sure of her, Jeff annoyed and jealous and probably feeling guilty for being both. She decided that Jeff would understand- making David happy was more important that easing Jeff's weirdness.
"Sure, come on in," she replied as breezily as she could, and followed David out of the passenger side door of their little car.
The last time Jeff and David had been there, they had all been so concentrated on explaining the crazy thing with the crash to each other that her place hadn't really gotten any attention. This time however…
"I uh- forgot how cozy this place is," David said unconvincingly as he looked around.
"Hey, it's my first place on my own. I think I did okay," Heather defended her crappy little apartment. And okay, her place was the kind of small you could only find in a big expensive city, but, her friend Dana had helped her to make the place livable- taken her dumpster diving in the right neighborhoods and helped her paint over the stains on the walls. Now it was downright homey.
"Don't listen to him, Heather," Jeff advised, "he's a design snob- if you didn't pay way too much for it, it isn't worth having." At that David poked him hard in the shoulder the way he always did when he was actually getting annoyed but was pretending not to be because they weren't alone.
"Why don’t you give us the grand tour," David suggested and Heather could see it for the attempt to prove Jeff wrong that it was.
"Not much to see, but- uh…" Heather showed them her sofa (which they had already spent a few hours sitting on when they had been there before), her bedroom (which had a rickety rescued sleigh bed and a desk that had seen better days in it, but not much else), the kitchen (which was really just one wall of the living room with a super small fridge and a two burner range) and the patio (which was the best room of the apartment, having a refurbished slider that had once been her grandmother's, all of her plant pots, and a view of the neighborhood park).
Jeff stood in Heather's little back doorway and watched as David admired her parsley, sage, and rosemary. "What no thyme?" David asked.
"Yeah- it's over here, waiting to be repotted because it's getting so big." Heather picked it up from the top of the small cabinet she used to store her gardening supplies. When she held it up so he could smell it, a cardinal, surprising and luridly red, flew up from behind the cabinet, its song making Heather jump with how sharp it was.
That jackass Luis came in late again, complaining about the traffic. He was in such a hurry to get at the last of the donuts that Heather-Melika had brought in that morning that he dropped his big clunky lunch box down on the boards that were sitting across a couple of sawhorses to make a table. The lunchbox joggled the boards enough that the thermos of coffee that was on the edge of the table tipped off, hit the ground, and rolled over the bare subfloor that they were installing. It leaked brown liquid the whole way across the room in little dribs and drabs, and stopped next to the wall. Melika- Melie- she watched this all happen, biting her tongue because Luis was the foreman and she wasn't. She got up from where she was kneeling, set her nail gun on the table, and walked over to pick up the thermos.
"How many damned times do I have to tell you not to leave your thermos on the edge?" Luis asked angrily. Melie held the dripping thermos out in front of her as she turned around to bring it back to the sawhorse table. Luis was holding his nail gun in one hand and his donut in the other as he talked with his hands. "Look at the frickin' mess you're making. You're gonna clean that all-" he stopped talking and a look of revulsion came to his face. Melie heard the familiar whoosh-click sounds of the nails after they had to have left the nail gun, since she already tasted the salty warmth of blood in the back of her throat. She dropped the thermos with a thud, the lid popping off and splashing dark liquid over the floor.
Jeff was saying, "No, no, I got her- you get the door." Heather's head was pounding and her hair was sticking to her face- possibly she was upside-down? Then she was being flipped back onto her couch, David and Jeff's concerned faces looking at her.
"Hey, sweetie, you back with us?" David asked.
***
Heather shouldn't have been surprised that David refused to leave when she told them she was fine and could handle cleaning herself (and the patio and the thyme plant that had again suffered from her vision). She ended up glad that they hadn't left when she stood in the shower scrubbing off the piss and the vomit and, okay, a little blood from the place on her leg where the shattering thyme pot had nicked her. Her head had gotten a little better, but her leg was throbbing- a bruise purpling up- and her stomach was cramping. It was ludicrously nice to come out of the bathroom to the smell of canned chicken soup simmering on the stove and David and Jeff treating her like she was fragile- making her put up and ice her leg (Jeff) and brushing out her hair for her (David).
She would have liked to stay right there comfy on her couch, pampered by gay men, slurping soup and oyster crackers, but eventually, she was going to have to figure out how to keep Melika from getting nailed through neck in the morning.
***
"They're not usually this bad- it's just that I was standing up this time," Heather tried to explain.
"Wait, I thought you only had two visions before this one- how can you say they are usually anything?" Jeff demanded, his tone was angry, but she could tell that it was really worry for her health that he was expressing. Somehow, the tug of fascination, the connection that was there between the two of them had been pulled taut by her latest vision. Every little thing they said or did to each other was making the connection hum and buzz- and Heather wanted. What she wanted from Jeff, she was trying hard not to look at too closely. And if Jeff was feeling anything similar, it had to be even more disconcerting for him.
"Heather, you really don't know anything about what's happening to you- how it's affecting you-"
"Jeff, don't yell at her," David chided. "She's been through enough today."
Jeff glared at David a moment before his face softened and he replied, "Yeah, I know." And he turned to Heather. "I'm gonna go outside and clean up the patio, okay?"
"Yeah, okay," Heather nodded and let him go- it was kind of a relief to have him on the other side of the door for a few minutes.
David sat on the sofa next to her and stroked her hair. "He doesn't mean to be so- he just cares, you know?" he told her in a quiet voice.
"I know," she parroted back. Heather leaned into David's touch- funny how right then- despite being hopelessly in love and helplessly in lust with David via Jeff's memories- right then, David was just a fantastic comfort and Jeff was the one who was making her crazy.
A little while later, after David went out to get groceries so he could make them all dinner- it was way early, but they had only had soup for lunch what with the excitement of Heather's vision- after David left for groceries, Heather was alone in her tiny apartment with Jeff. He fussed outside repotting the thyme plant for her and hosing off the patio until there wasn't anything to do out there. Then he came inside and stood at the far end of the room from her (which was only ten feet away) and asked, "So, what do you know about the person you saw- I mean, shouldn't we be rushing out to fix it?"
"It doesn't happen until tomorrow morning, and it's an accident." Heather replied, ignoring the honking huge elephant in the string bikini right along with Jeff- if that was the way he wanted to play it- "I'm not sure how to stop it yet- I don't think either of them will believe me if I tell them ahead of time-"
"Two people died? Again- like David and me?" He stepped closer and sat on the arm of the couch, seeming to forget that he wanted to keep his distance.
"No, actually, one died and the other accidentally killed her." Heather leaned a little, her cheek grazing his forearm. Jeff let out a gasp as the connection between them sparked hot.
"Shit," he muttered, and then he was kneeling in front of her, pushing in close, pressing their foreheads together as if that could slow the buzz between them, put some slack in the line tugging them together. "What is this?" his breath puffed warm and sweet in her face as he spoke.
"I don't know- I just want-" she broke off with a shudder. Saying it would make it worse, she was sure of it.
"Me, too." He sat back, his hands sliding down her arms to hold her hands. "I don't want to want- I mean- David-"
Heather nodded because of course. "We can't let this, this thing hurt David," she agreed.
The keys David had borrowed jangled in the front door lock. Jeff was across the room before the door swung open. Heather sat there panting and trying not to look guilty. She doubted she was doing a good job of it.
"So how's our patient?" David asked, coming in with a couple of bags from an upscale grocer.
***
Melika was working on a carpeting installation in Yonkers. It was a small court of garden apartments and Melie didn't know which apartment they will be in, but Heather did. Jeff drove them out there at 6:30 a.m. so they wouldn't chance lateness and they had coffee and bagels in the Mini Cooper as they worked out their plan.
"So, how hard do you have to work to change it?" David asked, "I mean- if we stop it today, but they don't know what we did, will it just happen tomorrow?"
"It was kind of a freak accident- not like your SUV- those brakes were going to go at some point, but I don't think the nail gun malfunctioned, so I think all we need to do is to make it not happen this morning," Heather answered.
Jeff got a distant, thinky look on his face and asked, "The nail gun- battery or corded?"
"Corded," Heather told him. Then, before he asked the question, she answered, "The main's in the basement of the front office building."
"How hard will it be to-" Jeff started, but the connection between them made it easy for her to think with the Jeffish part of her head- pry open the door it supplied, so Heather answered before he finished.
"Just bring the tire iron-"
"What about the-" super?
"Not here until 9-" Their connection buzzed- she could feel it low in her gut, like a living thing struggling. "He lives across town."
"And Melie-"
"7:15-"
"We go now, then," Jeff said, panting a little with the excitement. Heather was out of breath, too- because it felt really good between them.
"Okay, and for sake of those in the car who don't almost literally share a brain?" David asked loudly and Heather kind of jumped, startled to remember he was still in the car with them.
"Sorry, babe," Jeff said because, yeah- he and Heather hadn't really been making sense except to each other. "The nail gun won't work if we shut the power off- shut the power off to the whole courtyard and everything changes because they have to spend time figuring out the trouble."
"Oh, okay," David responded. Then, looking at Heather he asked, "Will that be enough?"
"I'm pretty sure," she answered trying to sound it.
***
Heather felt the cracking noise the utility room door made as Jeff pried it open- she felt the cracking in her bones like ice breaking- the tension ramping up impossibly further. She could feel Jeff working at not even looking at her because they had to get this done and getting distracted by the sex they weren't having would have to wait until Melie was going to live through the day.
David was outside in the hallway keeping lookout. Heather almost wished that they had left him home or at least back in the car- he was extremely nervous and she worried about him- what would happen if someone did come down there and David tried to be their first line of defense- he wasn't the fighting kind, so unless he could reason with and angry property manager, he could be facing more than he could handle. Heather shook her head, recognizing that she had been thinking about David like Jeff thought about David- over-protectively. Thinking like Jeff had been helpful earlier when they were making their plan in the car, but it was not exactly helping in their current situation.
So, the plan had been to just switch off the main and hope that that was enough change to Melie's morning to save her life. The problem was, switching it off didn't bring the surge of relief to Heather that putting out Isaac's fire or puncturing Jeff and David's tires had brought.
Jeff looked at her, his eyes wild with it. "Is that it?" he asked, "because that doesn't seem like that's it."
"No- it's not enough- we need to-" Heather broke off to duck and shield her eyes as Jeff swung the tire iron like a baseball bat, connecting with the powered-down breaker box like he had connected with Ronnie Ashburn's big meatball of a pitch back in the varsity baseball championships his senior year (they had lost, but Jeff's homerun had stood out in his mind as one little moment of perfection in his life- unmatched pretty much until he had met David).
And that did do it- Heather felt it all drain away- Melie was safe and Jeff was standing there, his eyes closed, the crowbar hanging loosely in his hand, release plain on his face.
"Jesus, what did you two do?" David yelled at them- half his body visible as he leaned through the doorway. And, when neither of them answered- when they just stood there basking in the fantastic shift from tension to sanity, he said, "We really need to leave- someone had to have heard that." Then he pulled at Heather's arm.
Snapping to, Jeff agreed, "Right, we ought to go," and followed them out.
They drove Heather to work- David still wired and nervous from what they had just done, Jeff loose and happy in a way Heather hadn't seen in him. Then the fellas went off to have their own normal workdays. Heather marveled at how surreal her life had become in the last couple of weeks.
***
When Heather got home from work that night Dana was inside her apartment eating her leftovers. David had made them cassoulet the night before.
"Okay, who made this- because I know you can't cook like this- and please tell me it was one of those two guys who were hanging around your apartment yesterday- maybe not the one you're dating but his super cute friend?" Dana asked between bites of food.
"Uh- well, one of them made it- David, but I'm not dating either of them- they're together," Heather answered, kind of bewildered at the idea of Dana wanting to date either Jeff or David- not that she could blame her since Heather was sweating them both (even more than Isaac's Sarah or Melie's very hot ex-husband Jamal, who Melie and therefore Heather was still very much hung up on).
"Okay, well that's a shame. I thought you were finally growing a sex life and I was totally planning to ride on your coattails." Dana smiled wide at her and Heather stopped feeling the least bit jealous that Dana though the fellas were hot. "Guess that's another plan shot to hell. So, spill it- who are they?"
"Just some new friends. I am allowed to make friends with people you haven't introduce me to, aren't I?" Heather said mock snidely. Heather's lack of people skills were under constant discussion between the two of them- Dana was trying to improve them, but it had always been something of a losing battle.
"Allowed, sure- but it is just kind of unprecedented, that's all."
"Thanks," Heather replied with a grimace and went to get herself a spoon- cold leftovers with Dana was almost as good as fresh made cassoulet with Jeff and David. At least she didn't have to keep herself in check against losing it and sleeping with Dana thereby alienating her non-existent lover.
Genre: Original Science Fiction (containing Slash, Femmeslash and Het elements)
Rating: R-ish (NC-17 eventually?)
Summary: How did she know? A little birdie told her.
Previous chapters found here.
Chapter 3: Woodpecker
"Okay, we drove you all the way here- you know you have to invite us in for coffee." David looked over his shoulder as he talked to her as she was gathering her bag and unfastening her seatbelt.
"David, she already told us her life story and stayed for your sleepover. Don't you think we ought to leave her in peace for a while?" Jeff disliked when David got fascinated with a new toy or a new person. He always tried to slow David down a little for his own good.
"Oh, stop." David poked Jeff in the shoulder. "She loves us, don't you, sweetie?"
Heather looked at them- David hopeful and sure of her, Jeff annoyed and jealous and probably feeling guilty for being both. She decided that Jeff would understand- making David happy was more important that easing Jeff's weirdness.
"Sure, come on in," she replied as breezily as she could, and followed David out of the passenger side door of their little car.
The last time Jeff and David had been there, they had all been so concentrated on explaining the crazy thing with the crash to each other that her place hadn't really gotten any attention. This time however…
"I uh- forgot how cozy this place is," David said unconvincingly as he looked around.
"Hey, it's my first place on my own. I think I did okay," Heather defended her crappy little apartment. And okay, her place was the kind of small you could only find in a big expensive city, but, her friend Dana had helped her to make the place livable- taken her dumpster diving in the right neighborhoods and helped her paint over the stains on the walls. Now it was downright homey.
"Don't listen to him, Heather," Jeff advised, "he's a design snob- if you didn't pay way too much for it, it isn't worth having." At that David poked him hard in the shoulder the way he always did when he was actually getting annoyed but was pretending not to be because they weren't alone.
"Why don’t you give us the grand tour," David suggested and Heather could see it for the attempt to prove Jeff wrong that it was.
"Not much to see, but- uh…" Heather showed them her sofa (which they had already spent a few hours sitting on when they had been there before), her bedroom (which had a rickety rescued sleigh bed and a desk that had seen better days in it, but not much else), the kitchen (which was really just one wall of the living room with a super small fridge and a two burner range) and the patio (which was the best room of the apartment, having a refurbished slider that had once been her grandmother's, all of her plant pots, and a view of the neighborhood park).
Jeff stood in Heather's little back doorway and watched as David admired her parsley, sage, and rosemary. "What no thyme?" David asked.
"Yeah- it's over here, waiting to be repotted because it's getting so big." Heather picked it up from the top of the small cabinet she used to store her gardening supplies. When she held it up so he could smell it, a cardinal, surprising and luridly red, flew up from behind the cabinet, its song making Heather jump with how sharp it was.
That jackass Luis came in late again, complaining about the traffic. He was in such a hurry to get at the last of the donuts that Heather-Melika had brought in that morning that he dropped his big clunky lunch box down on the boards that were sitting across a couple of sawhorses to make a table. The lunchbox joggled the boards enough that the thermos of coffee that was on the edge of the table tipped off, hit the ground, and rolled over the bare subfloor that they were installing. It leaked brown liquid the whole way across the room in little dribs and drabs, and stopped next to the wall. Melika- Melie- she watched this all happen, biting her tongue because Luis was the foreman and she wasn't. She got up from where she was kneeling, set her nail gun on the table, and walked over to pick up the thermos.
"How many damned times do I have to tell you not to leave your thermos on the edge?" Luis asked angrily. Melie held the dripping thermos out in front of her as she turned around to bring it back to the sawhorse table. Luis was holding his nail gun in one hand and his donut in the other as he talked with his hands. "Look at the frickin' mess you're making. You're gonna clean that all-" he stopped talking and a look of revulsion came to his face. Melie heard the familiar whoosh-click sounds of the nails after they had to have left the nail gun, since she already tasted the salty warmth of blood in the back of her throat. She dropped the thermos with a thud, the lid popping off and splashing dark liquid over the floor.
Jeff was saying, "No, no, I got her- you get the door." Heather's head was pounding and her hair was sticking to her face- possibly she was upside-down? Then she was being flipped back onto her couch, David and Jeff's concerned faces looking at her.
"Hey, sweetie, you back with us?" David asked.
***
Heather shouldn't have been surprised that David refused to leave when she told them she was fine and could handle cleaning herself (and the patio and the thyme plant that had again suffered from her vision). She ended up glad that they hadn't left when she stood in the shower scrubbing off the piss and the vomit and, okay, a little blood from the place on her leg where the shattering thyme pot had nicked her. Her head had gotten a little better, but her leg was throbbing- a bruise purpling up- and her stomach was cramping. It was ludicrously nice to come out of the bathroom to the smell of canned chicken soup simmering on the stove and David and Jeff treating her like she was fragile- making her put up and ice her leg (Jeff) and brushing out her hair for her (David).
She would have liked to stay right there comfy on her couch, pampered by gay men, slurping soup and oyster crackers, but eventually, she was going to have to figure out how to keep Melika from getting nailed through neck in the morning.
***
"They're not usually this bad- it's just that I was standing up this time," Heather tried to explain.
"Wait, I thought you only had two visions before this one- how can you say they are usually anything?" Jeff demanded, his tone was angry, but she could tell that it was really worry for her health that he was expressing. Somehow, the tug of fascination, the connection that was there between the two of them had been pulled taut by her latest vision. Every little thing they said or did to each other was making the connection hum and buzz- and Heather wanted. What she wanted from Jeff, she was trying hard not to look at too closely. And if Jeff was feeling anything similar, it had to be even more disconcerting for him.
"Heather, you really don't know anything about what's happening to you- how it's affecting you-"
"Jeff, don't yell at her," David chided. "She's been through enough today."
Jeff glared at David a moment before his face softened and he replied, "Yeah, I know." And he turned to Heather. "I'm gonna go outside and clean up the patio, okay?"
"Yeah, okay," Heather nodded and let him go- it was kind of a relief to have him on the other side of the door for a few minutes.
David sat on the sofa next to her and stroked her hair. "He doesn't mean to be so- he just cares, you know?" he told her in a quiet voice.
"I know," she parroted back. Heather leaned into David's touch- funny how right then- despite being hopelessly in love and helplessly in lust with David via Jeff's memories- right then, David was just a fantastic comfort and Jeff was the one who was making her crazy.
A little while later, after David went out to get groceries so he could make them all dinner- it was way early, but they had only had soup for lunch what with the excitement of Heather's vision- after David left for groceries, Heather was alone in her tiny apartment with Jeff. He fussed outside repotting the thyme plant for her and hosing off the patio until there wasn't anything to do out there. Then he came inside and stood at the far end of the room from her (which was only ten feet away) and asked, "So, what do you know about the person you saw- I mean, shouldn't we be rushing out to fix it?"
"It doesn't happen until tomorrow morning, and it's an accident." Heather replied, ignoring the honking huge elephant in the string bikini right along with Jeff- if that was the way he wanted to play it- "I'm not sure how to stop it yet- I don't think either of them will believe me if I tell them ahead of time-"
"Two people died? Again- like David and me?" He stepped closer and sat on the arm of the couch, seeming to forget that he wanted to keep his distance.
"No, actually, one died and the other accidentally killed her." Heather leaned a little, her cheek grazing his forearm. Jeff let out a gasp as the connection between them sparked hot.
"Shit," he muttered, and then he was kneeling in front of her, pushing in close, pressing their foreheads together as if that could slow the buzz between them, put some slack in the line tugging them together. "What is this?" his breath puffed warm and sweet in her face as he spoke.
"I don't know- I just want-" she broke off with a shudder. Saying it would make it worse, she was sure of it.
"Me, too." He sat back, his hands sliding down her arms to hold her hands. "I don't want to want- I mean- David-"
Heather nodded because of course. "We can't let this, this thing hurt David," she agreed.
The keys David had borrowed jangled in the front door lock. Jeff was across the room before the door swung open. Heather sat there panting and trying not to look guilty. She doubted she was doing a good job of it.
"So how's our patient?" David asked, coming in with a couple of bags from an upscale grocer.
***
Melika was working on a carpeting installation in Yonkers. It was a small court of garden apartments and Melie didn't know which apartment they will be in, but Heather did. Jeff drove them out there at 6:30 a.m. so they wouldn't chance lateness and they had coffee and bagels in the Mini Cooper as they worked out their plan.
"So, how hard do you have to work to change it?" David asked, "I mean- if we stop it today, but they don't know what we did, will it just happen tomorrow?"
"It was kind of a freak accident- not like your SUV- those brakes were going to go at some point, but I don't think the nail gun malfunctioned, so I think all we need to do is to make it not happen this morning," Heather answered.
Jeff got a distant, thinky look on his face and asked, "The nail gun- battery or corded?"
"Corded," Heather told him. Then, before he asked the question, she answered, "The main's in the basement of the front office building."
"How hard will it be to-" Jeff started, but the connection between them made it easy for her to think with the Jeffish part of her head- pry open the door it supplied, so Heather answered before he finished.
"Just bring the tire iron-"
"What about the-" super?
"Not here until 9-" Their connection buzzed- she could feel it low in her gut, like a living thing struggling. "He lives across town."
"And Melie-"
"7:15-"
"We go now, then," Jeff said, panting a little with the excitement. Heather was out of breath, too- because it felt really good between them.
"Okay, and for sake of those in the car who don't almost literally share a brain?" David asked loudly and Heather kind of jumped, startled to remember he was still in the car with them.
"Sorry, babe," Jeff said because, yeah- he and Heather hadn't really been making sense except to each other. "The nail gun won't work if we shut the power off- shut the power off to the whole courtyard and everything changes because they have to spend time figuring out the trouble."
"Oh, okay," David responded. Then, looking at Heather he asked, "Will that be enough?"
"I'm pretty sure," she answered trying to sound it.
***
Heather felt the cracking noise the utility room door made as Jeff pried it open- she felt the cracking in her bones like ice breaking- the tension ramping up impossibly further. She could feel Jeff working at not even looking at her because they had to get this done and getting distracted by the sex they weren't having would have to wait until Melie was going to live through the day.
David was outside in the hallway keeping lookout. Heather almost wished that they had left him home or at least back in the car- he was extremely nervous and she worried about him- what would happen if someone did come down there and David tried to be their first line of defense- he wasn't the fighting kind, so unless he could reason with and angry property manager, he could be facing more than he could handle. Heather shook her head, recognizing that she had been thinking about David like Jeff thought about David- over-protectively. Thinking like Jeff had been helpful earlier when they were making their plan in the car, but it was not exactly helping in their current situation.
So, the plan had been to just switch off the main and hope that that was enough change to Melie's morning to save her life. The problem was, switching it off didn't bring the surge of relief to Heather that putting out Isaac's fire or puncturing Jeff and David's tires had brought.
Jeff looked at her, his eyes wild with it. "Is that it?" he asked, "because that doesn't seem like that's it."
"No- it's not enough- we need to-" Heather broke off to duck and shield her eyes as Jeff swung the tire iron like a baseball bat, connecting with the powered-down breaker box like he had connected with Ronnie Ashburn's big meatball of a pitch back in the varsity baseball championships his senior year (they had lost, but Jeff's homerun had stood out in his mind as one little moment of perfection in his life- unmatched pretty much until he had met David).
And that did do it- Heather felt it all drain away- Melie was safe and Jeff was standing there, his eyes closed, the crowbar hanging loosely in his hand, release plain on his face.
"Jesus, what did you two do?" David yelled at them- half his body visible as he leaned through the doorway. And, when neither of them answered- when they just stood there basking in the fantastic shift from tension to sanity, he said, "We really need to leave- someone had to have heard that." Then he pulled at Heather's arm.
Snapping to, Jeff agreed, "Right, we ought to go," and followed them out.
They drove Heather to work- David still wired and nervous from what they had just done, Jeff loose and happy in a way Heather hadn't seen in him. Then the fellas went off to have their own normal workdays. Heather marveled at how surreal her life had become in the last couple of weeks.
***
When Heather got home from work that night Dana was inside her apartment eating her leftovers. David had made them cassoulet the night before.
"Okay, who made this- because I know you can't cook like this- and please tell me it was one of those two guys who were hanging around your apartment yesterday- maybe not the one you're dating but his super cute friend?" Dana asked between bites of food.
"Uh- well, one of them made it- David, but I'm not dating either of them- they're together," Heather answered, kind of bewildered at the idea of Dana wanting to date either Jeff or David- not that she could blame her since Heather was sweating them both (even more than Isaac's Sarah or Melie's very hot ex-husband Jamal, who Melie and therefore Heather was still very much hung up on).
"Okay, well that's a shame. I thought you were finally growing a sex life and I was totally planning to ride on your coattails." Dana smiled wide at her and Heather stopped feeling the least bit jealous that Dana though the fellas were hot. "Guess that's another plan shot to hell. So, spill it- who are they?"
"Just some new friends. I am allowed to make friends with people you haven't introduce me to, aren't I?" Heather said mock snidely. Heather's lack of people skills were under constant discussion between the two of them- Dana was trying to improve them, but it had always been something of a losing battle.
"Allowed, sure- but it is just kind of unprecedented, that's all."
"Thanks," Heather replied with a grimace and went to get herself a spoon- cold leftovers with Dana was almost as good as fresh made cassoulet with Jeff and David. At least she didn't have to keep herself in check against losing it and sleeping with Dana thereby alienating her non-existent lover.