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"That's not what I always heard," Suicide said, because honestly, if there was ever a phrase that cried out for an innuendo and an eyebrow raise that was it. And frankly, he remembered a few times where something that hurt had been . . . dammit, no point thinking about it now, not when they both had places to be and things to do. They'd probably baited the Universal Laws by having as much time as they had.

Still, Suicide took a moment to admire the picture Jenni made standing beside the bed--wearing a smirk and nothing else, a combination he definitely approved of--before reluctantly sitting up himself. Instead of standing up himself, though, he leaned over the edge of the bed and reached around Jenni to retrieve part of his uniform, taking the opportunity to trail a quick kiss across the smooth skin of her hip while he was in the neighborhood. Okay, okay, they really had to get up and that was technically not helping, but with Jenni still right in front of him he considered it extenuating circumstances.

Eventually, he managed to find all of his clothes (how the hell had his belt wound up all the way over there?) and began reassembling himself. Jenni had changed into fresh clothes and was brushing out her long hair, a hair tie already looped around a couple of fingers in preparation for making a quick braid.

A thought occurred. Suicide silently promised himself that, yes, they did have to go and all that, but . . . dammit . . . he literally was an old-fashioned guy. Ancient-fashioned, even.

"C'mere," he said, pulling Jenni down to sit on the bed next to him. She seemed surprised, but she complied.

Plucking the hair tie from her hands, Suicide ran his hands through the long dark-brown hair. It was clean--a change from what he'd usually worked with, back in the day--but there was also more of it, which he approved of. It took him a moment to remember how he used to begin (only one of his current hands had done this, and the years were hard on the body memory) but as he ran one strand through his fingers, it began to come back. Jenni habitually wore her hair in a braid, didn't she? Divide into three plaits, twist and weave, don't yank or the master you're doing this for will have you beaten with an olive branch. Out of habit, he used the more complicated braid that began at the crown: any loose hair in a fight could be damned dangerous.

In a way, it was a more intimate act than any of the (admittedly excellent) things they had gotten up to the night before. It was something he'd done only for the great men he'd served, usually when they'd broken an arm and couldn't dress their hair themselves. He was oddly unsure why he was doing it now . . . Something about the whole situation, sharing stories about last stands the way they had, had gotten a modicum of trust from him.

Jenni yelped as she went over and reflexively put up her arms in defense, but of course that meant nothing to a big warrior like Suicide. His weight pushed her hands right down, and by that time she'd cottoned on to what had happened and wasn't worried about it anyway. She was impressed that he'd pulled it off, and that was about as far as she was able to think until he relented. The pass at her neck left her sighing in disappointment when he then moved off. Brat. Tease. If she didn't have things to do . . . but she did, and since he sounded every bit as frustrated as she felt, she forgave him for toying with her. This time.

"Yeah," she agreed breathlessly to everything, said and unsaid. Abruptly, she pushed herself upright and got off the end of the bed, and started assessing what had become of yesterday's clothes. "Well, if it hurts, do it fast and get it over with, as they say." Did people say that, or was it just the band-aid thing? Eh, whatever. "Come on. I know you can shift yourself now." She smirked at him. She'd almost extended a helping hand, but after the stunt he'd just pulled she immediately thought better of it. She'd be more of a challenge in the future, so help her.

Yep, he'd said something wrong. In a way, though, he'd almost expected it; there was a mental gap there, citizen to helot in its manner (there was no other way he could think of it, when a few years as a character were nothing compared to almost forty back home), and he couldn't be surprised that he'd made a misstep. Still, it didn't seem to have hurt Jenni . . .

Trying to curb his behavior in order to not offend someone was a relative novelty in his life. But Jenni was a citizen-woman and as good as a battlefield medic, a firm hand and a smile with a challenge in it. She was a friend.

And she had worked miracles. As she spoke, Suicide pulled his arms in and braced his palms against the mattress. The muscles still pulled oddly in his shoulders and biceps, but there was a wonderful freedom of movement. He moved slowly, not intending to give anything away to Jenni right away, while she told him she had to get up. That's right, she had work, and she needed to see her son. Well . . .

"I should let you go," he said. Then, in one smooth motion, he pushed off from the mattress and executed a quick roll. Jenni had still been crouched over him, and with his leg hooked around her, he landed her neatly on her back. Another twist put him on top, leaning over her. His ends of his long gray hair draped down onto Jenni's messy brown, creating an odd tiger-stripe on the pillow. He kissed her hard again, showing his appreciation for her particular talents. Reluctantly--very reluctantly--he let her up after a long moment.

"But it's damned hard," he added, leaving one last nip at her neck. Wait, was that a double-entendre? Somehow, it wasn't as big a concern as it had been the night before. "I've probably got another mission waiting, too." The unspoken Gods damn it was clear.

((Ahhh, Oliver. With the inspiration of Master Chief's voice, though, I had to steal another line.))

I'll see if Trojie can break out her spiffy knowledge of all things scientific for us.

Maybe we should try to bribe it with its favourite food, then trap it in a cage to experiment on it?

Annual spam attacks are a strange thing, though. Maybe... maybe, and this is a long shot, it has something to do with schools in the northern hemisphere finishing for the summer, and the already-bored techno-minded students wanting something 'fun' to do?

That, or we really are going to have to look into the life cycle and feeding habits of the common spambot...

On one hand, both boards looks like deliberate disruption. On the other, if that's what they were going for, why limit themselves to once a year?

I wondered if this was coming. Does this strike anybody else as reeking of a deliberate disruption? Three years with this is pretty ridiculous. Did we piss somebody off during the summer at some point?

~Neshomeh

-until it is completely weathered out.

Good grief. From her kneeling crouch over his hips, Jenni shook her head, glad that he couldn't see the part amused, part disgusted expression on her face. Typical fighting man. She did appreciate the sentiment behind the tasteless offer, but . . . "No, my friend, I couldn't hold you to anything promised under duress. Actually, take a breather. And stop strangling my pillow."

She switched from directed pressure to broad, shallow sweeps up and down with her palms, giving him a chance to unclench and get his breath back. Once she got into the sort of work she'd been doing, she didn't mess around. Her hands told her what was necessary, and she did it, whatever the spasms and vocalizations. (As the latter went, "Perfect" was pretty damn good to hear.)

Meanwhile, she glanced at the time and grimaced. "Shards. We do have to wrap this up. I'm not late, but I have things to do before work, the chief among which is making sure Henry knows I didn't forget him. The Nursery's good, but they don't quite have the creche mentality down—too busy. Maybe Ilraen . . . never mind. Before that, I aim to have a quick wash and some breakfast. You can stay here as long as you want, or tag along. What do you say? And, anything in particular I should hit quick before I let you up?" Well, that might be overstating his ability to move just a bit, but the effect was temporary.

(( He works with what he's got. g And no, I'd never seen that before. Today's post title comes from Oliver & Company, though. ))

So do we hang out on the board until it passes, or just weather it?

This could be my obsession with naming things speaking out again, but if this happens every year, it ought to have a name. :D

The migration patterns and breeding sites of the wild spambot, I suspect.

Tis the season. And then we should expect it to continue on and off until the end of September.

... spambots tend to hit us in August, which means this one is about ten days early. Or there's a time warp.

hS

Suicide considered responding to that--maybe by pointing out that she'd picked a brain-damaged, 11% artificial man who had just mentioned his plan to follow up the pleasantry of the last twelve hours with a spot of trying to get himself killed--but something told him sarcasm, however lighthearted, wouldn't be appreciated at that moment. Furthermore, something very peculiar seemed to be happening to his verbal facilities: attempts to form words were being stifled halfway and turned into something approaching a moan.

Anybody who's suffered the pain and indignity of a major injury knows that, healed or not, that injury will be with you for the rest of your life. Break an ankle at ten, and it will still be aching sixty-five years later. This goes some way towards explaining why Suicide, who hadn't gotten eight hours in his-or-any-other-gods-only-knew-when and couldn't count all his collected injuries on both hands and feet, was having trouble expressing himself. He knew about working out muscle knots--a squire had to--but modern medicine had added some tricks even the Bacchan whores hadn't had.

Somehow he wound up lying on his stomach, Jenni leaning over him. He could feel the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck as she worked, smoothing out the aches and dodging neatly around the green-and-purple bruising still leftover from the gods-damned Archir incident.

"You know," he managed to say after a long pause, his voice hoarse, "this isn't going to guarantee you getting to work any faster." She hit a particularly sensitive spot, and he hissed between his teeth. "Perfect. Perfect. Gods, tell me you need something killed . . . I'll have its head on your desk by noon."

((Charming as ever. eyeroll Incidentally, Jenni's last line made me think of this famous scene-- http://youtu.be/kawnOGZb48o . Was that intentional?))

It wasn't as though she hadn't known to a degree; it wasn't a big secret with his name and history being what they were, so the sting of hearing him say it wasn't as much as it could have been—a static shock rather than touching a power line—but it was enough to make her pause while her worldview settled back into place around the admission. There were mitigating factors. The way he said it, it was clear it wasn't a matter of self-hatred, which she could not have stood, but simply a certainty that death was coming and it was just, so he might as well meet it halfway. Also, perspective was key: she was not mortal, and she would lose all her friends here eventually, whether she left first or something happened to them, whether they wanted it or not.

She gave Suicide a quick one-armed squeeze, then went back to work on him with gusto. "I know," she said. She did now. "I sure can pick 'em, huh?"

The words sounded strange in Suicide's ears; awkward, maybe, like he wasn't quite sure the world fit into place around them. It didn't surprise him, somehow. She seemed to have momentarily dropped any defenses she had, and unguarded, spontaneous moments of heartfelt expression rarely sound like they do in the epics. He could understand someone having such a moment, and wasn't about to make fun of it. Campfires, winter hares and merchants' wagons, talk of the glue that held a phalanx together . . .

(It was that factor that kept Suicide's brain from screaming "HEALING SEX! Head for the hills!")

"'Mother to a nation,'" he said, his voice guttural as Jenni worked her magic on the knotted muscles. It was a quote, but likely one Jenni didn't recognize; he didn't think that myth had even been translated into Greek, let alone English. "Can't change who you are; shouldn't try." Well, quid pro quo and all that . . . He shifted a little, making them both more comfortable.

"I'm a patricide and deserve to be dead." A small, wry grin appeared, evident in his tone as he echoed her earlier words. "I'm going to keep trying, too, so you'd better get used to it."

Another straightforward pronouncement, devoid of the angst that usually accompanied phrases like 'I deserve to be dead.' He wasn't speaking out of emotion, but out of sheer metaphysical certainty. A father-killer was an unnatural thing; for the world to be right again, the murderer had to be murdered. E = mc2, where E equals death, m = paterfamilias, and c2 = the square of the velocity of the murdering son's knife arm in centimeters per second.

That sound was music to her ears, and it brought a beatific smile to her face. She'd got it right. It was a relief, and she found herself relaxing. She hadn't realized how much she'd tensed up, unconsciously worrying that things might take a bad turn. Much encouraged, she tucked her head under his chin, wriggling as close as she could get to allow her arm as much freedom as possible. This was not the ideal way to go about this, but she wasn't quite sure he'd let go of her now, and she wasn't quite sure she wanted him to. It would do for a start.

"Okay, you got me," she said to his collarbone. "It's not all lust. I have a deep and abiding drive to care for others that sometimes gets me into trouble. I can't help it, so you'd better get used to it." She wasn't being facetious, despite how silly the claim could have sounded. It was the simple truth that defined her existence, pronounced in a moment of communion.

Oh, she had his attention, all right. Suicide tensed as she pressed her thumb into the hard knot of muscle: a momentary stab of pain shot through it, but as she gently twisted her fingers, the muscle began to relax and the pain became less sharp. An involuntary sound, a mixture of a sigh and a groan, escaped from his lips.

Both his shoulders had been shot in the first of the battles at the Gates, and that was only the beginning of the injury laundry list. Things had been fixed quite well--hell, he was alive, wasn't he?--but the residual aches remained, a consequence of simply being his age and still living despite the hell he'd put himself through. Now, tangled together with the pliable softness of Jenni, feeling the leaden pain of an old injury fade and shift like pack ice breaking up . . . He murmured something, an old Scythian curse, and almost unconsciously tightened his grip on her.

"Pure, huh," he managed to say. The mixture of pleasure and good pain--enough said. His constant paranoia whispered in his ear, telling him that it just meant she had access to his medical records and knew where to hit him, but Suicide could honestly acknowledge that right then, he didn't give a damn. Today was a good day to not die.

Ooh, touchy. She was onto something, and between the nabbing, the kissing, and what sounded almost like a challenge, he was trying to throw her off. He was putting forth a respectable effort, too. Her leg had ended up somewhere very interesting, and his kisses did wreak havoc on her concentration.

On the other hand, he'd made a crucial error by giving her access to his back. She debated the wisdom of taking advantage, but in the end she couldn't resist the opportunity to let him know she wasn't fooled and to fulfill her promise to herself. Some quick seeking with her fingers found a little-remembered spot just below the spine of the scapula, and she put her thumb knuckle into the muscle. This shoulder had undergone some reconstruction, if she remembered right, so she went cautiously to begin with. It would be awful to screw up and do something that caused true pain instead of the "hurts-so-good" of a well-done backrub. If he decided his pride could tolerate it, she would continue wherever she could reach.

"Sorry, still no point," she said. "Nume was just being an ass to protect some secret he thinks I might learn from you, and I'm not with you for that. My lustful motives remain pure." She grinned. Getting into a man's pants for its own sake wasn't usually considered pure, but usual was way less fun. "And you don't have to justify anything, by the way. I wasn't criticizing you."

Was she questioning his manhood? Eh, probably not, but she had definitely twigged to some part of what was going on with him. Living as long as Suicide technically had (barring a death or two) came with mixed blessings: women impressed by scars usually weren't quite as impressed with posttraumatic arthritis. (Ah, the words he'd learned when Medical was putting in his new limbs.)

Two possibilities occurred to him. One, he could execute a quick roll onto her (no hard task for anyone who'd spent time as a wrestling partner for pissy warrior types) and make good on demonstrating just how much activity he was ready for. Two, he could own up to the usual morning aches and see how she reacted. The former would be more fun in the short term, but it ran the risk of Jenni seeing it for the avoidance tactic it partially was. The latter, on the other hand, might get him something more than a hand massage--but possibly damaging his (so he believed) reputation as an unstoppable killing machine in the process. Decisions, decisions: waking up in bed with a woman like Jenni should not have given rise to that many questions.

There was always the middle path. Turning onto his side, he hooked one leg around hers and pulled her a little closer, echoing her earlier brief kiss with more intent and meaning. "I already told you," he said with a lazy smile, running a hand through her loose hair. "You wore the crazy right out of me. I feel perfectly gods-damned justified in taking my time waking up.

"And I'll be keeping that point, thanks. Nume expended some real effort in telling me how duplicitous and . . . clutches-y you were. A prize manipulator should know better than to sleep with someone they actually like." A gender-neutral pronoun with a double edge, he thought. Though he counted himself less a manipulator and more a maimer, really . . .

Jenni grinned back. "Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't have to lower my standards to sleep with you. I just plain like you. Dock yourself a point." She shifted herself upward enough to plant a kiss on his mouth for emphasis on the most important of the things she'd said there.

Feeling fully awake now, she added, "And I think you should tell me what you want to happen while you've got me here. Apart from Henry, my routine usually involves tea, breakfast, and some days a shower, all of which I'm happy to share with you, but you don't seem ready for that much activity yet." That . . . well, sadly it made sense. She couldn't be distracted from healer mode too long. He did seem to be moving as little as possible, barring what was involved in petting her (which was very nice). She would see what he said, but she promised herself to show him what she could really do with her hands sooner than later.

((Cont'd from below to prevent comment trees)

Suicide had, out of long habit, stolen most of the blankets. When Jenni put her leg over his, he belatedly realized that she didn't have anything on or over her. After taking a moment to admire the picture she made, he untangled one of the blankets (it had gotten quite knotted before being kicked aside) and reluctantly pulled it up just far enough to hide the leg.

He raised his head just enough to grin down at her. "Yep. Bad influence, me. Let's see . . . I've influenced Nume into punching me in the face, and influenced you into lowering your standards enough to sleep with a Scythian helot. Not a bad start." He shifted his free hand under the blanket to Jenni's raised leg, running a rough palm over it and stroking along the lines of muscle that stood out beneath the smooth skin. Ye gods, that felt good. "So far I'm two for two on corruption. What d'you think I should do next? Besides keep you here as long as possible."

At the hiss she paused her wandering and propped herself up on her right elbow to scope out what she'd touched. She hadn't been thinking about wounds and charts, but when she saw the extensive scar below his left ribs, and the others visible across his body, she matched them to the descriptions she'd read. A twinge of empathy momentarily intruded on her calm, but perhaps deliberately, Suicide didn't allow her time to dwell on it.

She was happy to snuggle closer. With all the moving around she'd done, despite her best intentions to be lazy, she'd almost completely lost her covering of blankets. She drew up her raised leg and crossed his thigh with it. Her hand went back to gently stroking his chest and abdomen, scars and all, with the occasional detour into light kneading where she sensed it would be appreciated.

His suggestion about having been on the clock got an all-too-ironic laugh. "Well, I'm glad, but . . . no . . . I don't think my bosses would approve at all. Shards, I wouldn't approve. Confusing business with pleasure is one sin I managed to avoid, and here you are encouraging me. You're a bad influence," she accused, looking down her nose with mock alarm. "Somebody should have warned me about you."