Needs - Speciation
Speciation is defined as: the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. This occurs when populations are separated and adapt to their new environment or conditions.

While Bass and Charlie had been busy finding their way back to Camp Matheson, Miles had overheard some potentially terrifying news about a disease outbreak in Willoughby. At Gene's insistence, though no one had really objected, the group had decided to wait around the area to hear confirmation of the story before deciding what their next steps would be. The Ranger courier wasn't expected for a couple more days still, so the whole camp was in a holding pattern. That didn't really upset Bass much, as he'd more than met his weekly quota of personal drama at least twice over, and it was only Wednesday. A little R and R was a welcomed change of pace.

He wasn't sure if it was an attempt to reiterate the truth in the previous day's peace accord, or if Miles's penchant for being quiet and broody had finally worn her down to utter boredom, but Rachel appeared in front of Bass after breakfast holding a chess board and a cigar box containing almost all of the necessary pieces.

"Aaron found it in that old farm house. No one else has been able to give me a run for my money yet. Care to take a shot?" She asked.

"You telling me strategic mastermind General Matheson still hasn't figured out which piece is the rook?" Bass smiled as he took the board from her and laid it out in acceptance of the challenge.

"I heard that." Miles grumped from a few yards away. "The rook's the one that looks like a castle." After a brief silence he wavered, "Right?"

"He's got to be the only man on the continent to ever control an army and not know how to play chess." Bass shook his head as he and Rachel exchanged a knowing and exasperated look. It was a long standing joke between the three of them.

The banter quickly drew Charlie's attention, and after finishing cleaning up the group's dishes from breakfast (her punishment for disobeying Miles's instructions to leave the bandit camp alone), she made her way over to them. She laid on her stomach in the grass and watched the match unfold.

The game had been going on for a while and Bass had Rachel just about where he wanted her. He moved the small dark colored rock, which was the stand in for his missing bishop, across the board to claim Rachel's last rook.

"You can't do that." Rachel looked at him quizzically.

"I can and I just did." Bass smirked.

"No." Rachel corrected. "I mean that's your knight, not your bishop."

The game had been missing a few pieces and they probably ought to have found more distinctive replacements than some rather ambiguous appearing rocks.

"Is not." He countered. "I want a second opinion." He looked to Charlie.

"That one was the little horse guy." She shrugged, her mastery of the game seemingly on par with her uncle's. He'd have to fix that.

Bass growled, "Whose side are you on?" Then he returned the knight rock and Rachel's rook to their previous places and began to contemplate his new strategy.

Miles walked up between Charlie and Bass and mindfully observed for a few moments before addressing Charlie, "Who's winning?"

"I have no idea." She answered with a shrug.

Bass felt cheated. He'd taken Rachel's queen a few moves back and was moving in for the kill. He was obviously winning.

"That's because you both have no idea how the game is played." He leveled at Charlie before looking up at his friend, "Jesus Miles, are you absolutely sure she isn't yours?"

That earned him a hard smack to the back of his head, but it was totally worth it to see the horrified and put out looks on everyone's faces. What? The affair had been common knowledge for a while now. There was no way they hadn't all thought it at some point or another. The math on the subject was all in favor of Ben, but you couldn't be around the pair of them for five minutes and not start to wonder.

After a brief head shake and an eye roll from Rachel, she added, "Oh, and Bass…" She moved her one remaining pawn forward. "Check mate."

His mouth dropped a little and got sort of stuck there as he took in the board. She was right. Dammit.

Miles laughed. Out loud.

Bass tipped over his king and extended his hand in defeat. They shook and Rachel smirked. He wanted to go hit something.

"Well that was thrilling." Charlie added sarcastically as she stood, stretched, and yawned. "Anybody up for some sparring?"

Bass looked at her curiously for a second. He let the very clear thought, "Get out of my head." rattle around mentally for a moment just in case.

When she raised an eyebrow at him, he forced himself to believe that it was a response to the odd look he was probably giving her, and not because she could actually read his mind.

"Sure. Why not." He grumbled and began to follow her away from the camp. As they walked away, his peripheral vision did catch the sight of Miles rolling his eyes, and putting his hands up in a supplicating gesture towards Rachel. Really? This point had been pretty clearly settled. What did they think was going to happen?

They stopped once they reached a small clearing down by the little creek they'd been using as a water source for their camp. He squared up across from her and asked, "Weapons?"

"Hand to hand."

"Let's see what you've got." He put his hand out, palm up, and tipped his fingers as if to say "bring it on" a la Keanu Reeves in the Matrix. She'd never get the reference and it made him look rather bad ass and nonchalant about her impending attack.

She came at him suddenly, but he was able to block the quick succession of punches she tried to land to his face and side. She was holding back, like all of them actually did when they sparred. None of them really wanted to hurt each other, any more at least. But she was also telegraphing her punches more than normal and her footwork wasn't as steady as usual. Something else was on her mind. When she swung wide on a right cross, he reached up and grabbed her arm. He spun her around, wrenched her shoulder behind her, and pulled her back tightly against his chest. She was pinned.

"You're getting sloppy. You're the one that wanted to do this, but you're fighting like you got something better to do." He admonished her, not even having the remotest idea what was going on in her head.

"Maybe I do." She huffed. Then she went slack in his arms and dropped her center of gravity just a bit.

He braced himself for the drop and roll she was about to go for, but as she leveraged his left shoulder pain shot through it and it felt about to give, a reminder that it had been dislocated just a few days prior and probably had not fully healed. He ceded and let her flip him onto his back to avoid dislocating the joint again.

She triumphantly sat astride his hips, pinning his wrists under her knees and leaning forward to hold an imaginary knife to his throat. "Who's sloppy now?"

"Congratulations." He said it more to the cleavage she was waving in his face than to her. "You managed to knock down a cripple." He shot a pointed look at his left shoulder.

She seemed to suddenly remember his injury and sat upright, releasing his arms from where they were pinned under her knees.

As he rubbed his shoulder, he didn't have the heart to break it to her that she didn't weigh quite enough for the way she'd tried to pin him. One forceful thrust of his hips would have unseated her, freed his hands, and let him climb on top of her. Though the move seemed a little inappropriate for their current situation. Not that inappropriate wasn't already starting to happen in his pants. She was sitting on top of him, rubbing her ass around on his lap, and panting as she looked down at him. He wasn't even going to bother trying to fight this battle. If she noticed him twitching beneath her, she didn't give any indication.

"You just gonna sit here all day? Thought you had something better to do." He threw her earlier comment back at her as he propped himself up on his elbows. The position wasn't a good one for his shoulder and he winced.

She reluctantly, if he wasn't imagining the emotion, stood from her position sitting atop his groin and extended him a hand. "Let me look at it." She sighed, as if inspecting his injury was some new kind of chore.

"It was dislocated, but popped back in. Not much to see, just a little sore." He deflected as he took her hand and pulled himself up.

"Let me see it anyway." She scolded him.

He relented and stood with the arm hanging limply at him side as she stood in front of him and reached out tentative hands to feel his shoulder. He'd worried that with her rather sour demeanor, for no reason he could discern, she would be rough with the injury, but her hands were gentle as she probed the joint and slowly lifted the arm. The way she was standing so close and gently manipulating his shoulder caused a familiar ache to start pooling deep in the pit of his stomach. Then she moved to stand behind him and continue probing the muscles of his shoulder as she elevated and dropped the arm. He could feel her breath on the back of his neck, and it was almost more than he could take.

"Char.." He'd started to voice his protest, but stopped when she spoke at the same time.

"Take off your shirt."

Every neuron in his brain was shouting that this was a horrible idea, but his body acquiesced without his conscious approval. He wordlessly pulled the t shirt off over his head and just dropped it at his side. He was thankful that she was standing behind him at this point, as his erection strained glaringly obvious and painfully against denim and zipper. He'd been fighting an angry case of blue balls ever since she'd interrupted his attempt to relieve himself the other day. This was nearly too much.

She lifted his arm until it was straight out and started rolling the shoulder in a circular motion. "Tell me what hurts." She basically whispered into his ear.

Fuck. His dick hurt. She could tear the damn shoulder clean off at this point for all he cared. But that was probably not what she wanted to hear. He couldn't hide the slight cringe when he felt bone grinding as his arm rotated up and back in the shoulder socket.

"There?" Her voice was muted and contemplative.

"Yeah." He answered meekly.

Her hands skimmed across the muscles over his upper arm and shoulder blade as she leaned forward against his back. "Does this help?" It was whispered into his ear from a scant inch away from the lobe before she dropped her mouth and placed a kiss on the crease between the muscle groups of his shoulder.

"Charlotte?" It came out as a strangled gasp as his knees nearly buckled. He felt her smile against his skin.

"Why don't you sit down before you fall down?" She suggested.

"But…" He tried to turn and face her, to ask her what the hell was going on. She couldn't just do this and go back. He couldn't do meaningless, not with her.

She put her hands on his shoulders and held him in place. "I know exactly what I'm doing, Bass. Trust me."

He sighed and dropped to the ground. He did trust her. In what had to be the most ironic twist of fate he could imagine, without hesitation he willingly submitted to her. If only President Monroe from a year and a half ago could see him now.

She knelt behind him and continued to massage his shoulder tenderly as she kissed along the side of his neck and jaw, and then focused on that spot just behind his ear that made his brain lock up. Eventually they dropped the pretense that this had anything to do with his shoulder, and their mouths met. The kiss was tentative at first, their fears spread before them like a great chasm. Though, like everything else that had happened between them, their bodies chose to ignore their brains and instinctively sought out the other like a magnetic polarity was pulling at them. There was a driving need behind the kiss as it deepened that neither was inclined to break. It was laced with sentiment on both their parts that he wouldn't even try to quantify. Eventually the kiss became so all-consuming that it was the only thing that existed in his world. His tongue aggressively reclaimed the familiar territory, and he made no attempt to forestall the little whimpers that escaped his throat as she shadowed his lingual explorations. By the time they broke apart to gasp for air, he'd tangled his hand in her hair and left her lips swollen and bruised.

Bass turned and grabbed her hips, then pulled her around so she was straddling his lap again where he sat. She was his again, and he needed her, all of her, that very moment. His hands slid up her back under her shirt and pulled her just close enough that her firm nipples grazed against his chest through her threadbare clothing. She ground down on him and it suddenly registered how overly stimulated he was. It had been too long and there were just too many emotions tied up in the way he felt touching her skin again. Shit. If she kept doing that…

She trailed her nails gently down his pecks and dropped her mouth to his throat. His breathing was coming in erratic gulps, but there was nothing he could do at that point. When she began to trace her fingers through the line of hair leading south from his navel, he knew he'd lost his fight. He tried to reach down and grab her hands to still them and spare himself a mortifying amount of embarrassment, but it was too late. She raked her pubic bone along the length of his hard on one last time and he broke. Shoving his tongue into her mouth and pulling her as firmly against him as he could, he came in his pants without her even touching him.

Once he'd spilled every last embarrassing drop of himself, he released his hold on her and collapsed backward onto the grass with his eyes slammed shut. Fuck, he felt like some kind of amateur. This was certainly not his finest moment. She'd actually come to him, wanting him, and he couldn't deliver. He didn't want to imagine what her response would be. Eventually he cautiously lifted a single lid and looked up at the woman still sitting astride him. Her reaction was not the revulsion he'd expected.

"Could you look any more pleased with yourself?" He moaned out.

She just kept smiling down at him. "Been wanting to do that since you told me about how it almost happened in Philly."

He sighed and reached up to pull her down to him, kissing her and rolling her underneath him. "I will have my revenge." He threatened between kisses.

"I'm counting on it." She purred into his ear.

He just marveled at her for a moment. He'd never deserve her, but damned if he wouldn't spend the rest of his life trying to earn the feelings she apparently had for him.

"Aww dammit! Not again." Aaron's voice was suddenly reverberating through Bass's skull.

This time Bass just stayed where he was and looked up at the intruder with a look that clearly said, "Do you mind?"

"WTF you two? It's like one minute you're doing it, the next you hate each other again, then suddenly you're back at it like rabbits. Exhibitionist horny rabbits. Can you just figure your shit out? Because trying to follow along with all this drama is giving me whiplash."

Bass and Charlie both couldn't help but laugh at Aaron's dismay.

"Yes. This is very funny. Fuck you both. Or, if you could actually not for like thirty seconds, I need to fill up my canteen first. Then feel free to go back to your lecherous fornication." With that Aaron actually stepped over them and made his was over to the stream. When he finished filling up his canteen he walked back to the path that led back to their camp mumbling, "Need to freaking hang a sock from a door knob or something."

"I missed this." Bass said unapologetically, a huge grin still plastered on his face.

"Me too." Charlie smiled up at him.